Salman Rushdie Planning to Write About Years in Hiding Because of Fatwa
Salman Rushdie is finally planning on writing
about the decade he spent under a fatwa of death issued by Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini. The fatwa was issued because Rushdie wrote The Satanic Verses.
"It's my story, and at some point, it does need to be told. That point is getting closer, I think," he told reporters at Emory University in Atlanta, where an exhibition of his personal correspondence, notebooks, photographs, drawings and manuscripts is set to open on Friday. "When [the archive material] was in cardboard boxes and dead computers, it would have been very, very difficult, but now it's all organised," he said.
Last year marked 20 years since the Iranian leader called for Rushdie's execution, saying that his novel The Satanic Verses insulted Islam, Mohammed and the Qur'an. The edict, which followed street protests and book burnings across the Muslim world, forced Rushdie to go into hiding under police protection for almost 10 years.
We do hope he gets on with it, as we are most interested to read it. Rushdie's next novel is called Luka and the Fire of Life. A sequel to the children's story Haroun and the Sea of Stories, the book will be released in fall, 2010.
