Most people have the freedom to live pragmatic lives without being challenged to defend their principles. Salman Rushdie lost this privilege. Not to be facetious, but this book might have been called "How I Survived the Worst Book Launch Ever." Has any single work of art caused more international turmoil or cost more lives than Rushdie's 1988 novel "The Satanic Verses"? This memoir which he published in 2012 describes how the Booker Prize winning author lived with a price on his head (and still does today) since before the Soviet Union fell and the internet became a thing. For convenience he was forced to assume a new identity as Joseph Anton, selected to honour Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekov.

It is very clear that he never anticipated the reaction his novel would receive. He agonized over transliterating his father's death into fiction, searching his soul to determine whether using so many of its actual details in his description of a character death was respectful or appropriate. The idea that there were other elements of his novel which he might better spend his time worrying over didn't occur to him. What follows is a detailed, exhaustive listing of what unfolded, drawn from what Rushdie recorded happening day by day. While the early reception met with protests and book banning, the worst did not come until a few months later when Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa calling for Rushdie's murder. Salman was forced into hiding, tormented with concern for his extended family who didn't receive the same protection. Ramifications spilled over into international politics and diplomatic relations were broken off. Books were burned, bombs exploded, and innocent people were killed over nothing more than literature.

Rushdie knows a lot of people in the literary world who pass in and out of his pages. Norman Mailer, Nadine Gordimer, Kurt Vonnegut, John Irving, Susan Sontag, William Golding, Roald Dahl, Naguib Mahfouz, John le Carré, Saul Bellow, Gunter Grass, Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Angela Carter, Kazuo Ishiguro ... the full list of names is immense. My personal favourites were his encounters with Umberto Eco and Maria Kodama. Rushdie divides these people into his "for him" and "against him" camps while providing some illustrative personal impressions. There's astonishing quotes captured from a number of famous names who said outrageous things on the record, and Rushdie does not want any of those to be forgotten. Cat Stevens, aka Yusuf Islam, known for the song "Peace Train", said on television he hoped for Rushdie's death and would direct the hit squads to the author's location if he ever determined it. This memoir effectively threatens more damage to the image of Islam by simply cataloging a litany of incidents like this than any number of trifling scenes from the novel in question, because none of this is made up fiction. Of course it is essential to remember that an entire religion's population cannot be painted with one brush. Rushdie makes this allowance. Islam, the religion of his forefathers and one he continues to respect from a secular standpoint, is not his enemy. Fundamentalist extremists and their apologists are (of any stripe), by their threat to what should be universal freedoms. They aim to make the world a smaller place, at the same time as literature seeks to expand it.

I'm made to question the judgmental attitudes he adapts, his attitude towards women in particular, and some of his waffling on whether he did or didn't intentionally make an anti-religious statement in the Verses. But if there is a theme here, it is the story of Rushdie's becoming a man of firm principal, beyond idle opinion. He took life as it came, until what came was so great a threat that he was forced to make a stand and assume a strong, unwavering position on something he might literally die defending. Ten years after publishing this memoir, more than thirty years after publishing the Verses, Salman Rushdie was attacked on stage at a reading in New York. It cost him an eye and the use of one hand, but by all accounts he lost none of his stance on literary freedom against religious oppression. I can imagine a sequel to this memoir, but never a recant. ( )

On Valentine’s Day, 1989 the Ayatollah Khomeini condemned Salman Rushdie to death for what he saw as Rushdie’s insult to Islam in the book [The Satanic Verses].

Rushdie was adamant that the offensive portion was only a dream sequence and that most of those vehemently against the novel had never read it.

Immediately, Rushdie was put under round the clock protection by the British Secret Service.

This is Salman’s account of his exile in his own homes and countries for the thirteen years after the fatwa was declared until his protection ended.

Joseph Anton was his alias in hiding – he chose it by combining the first names of his two favorite Russian authors.

It was a time of terror for Rushdie as various members of his publishers were bombed and killed. But as the thirteen years of active protection wore on, Rushdie became impatient with the enforced protection. He writes about this time – the breakup of multiple marriages, the stress of raising a son and then having a second child while his life was actively threatened. Eventually during this time, he was able to resume writing.

There was also some interesting biographical information as he recounted his childhood in India, and the death of his father.

At more than 600 pages, it is a very detailed account. Although interesting enough to keep listening to the end, I would not recommend it to someone like myself with a casual interest in this author. ( )

This is pure Salman Rushdie at his best, yet this time he is focused on his own life.Not surprisingly the story of his life is just as exciting and readable as those that his imagination has created. Recommended for all who have enjoyed his fiction. ( )

I was immediately drawn into this fascinating account of Rushdie's life during the fatwa years, and it helped a great deal that he described the process of writing "The Satanic Verses," and especially the meaning, both historically and to him personally, of the passages which infuriated the fundamentalist Muslims.

One of the reasons I enjoyed the book so much was the multiple aspects Rushdie included: his own relationship with religion, his creativity and process as a writer, his personal life (warts and all -- he reveals himself to be a flawed and sometimes selfish man), what it's like to live with 24 hour protection (not at all glamorous), what it's like to be vilified by nations and individuals he thought would champion his right to free speech and to stand up to terrorist bullies, his friendships with an extrordinary range of people, and his struggle to regain a normal life again. He doesn't spare his persecutors and critics, but he also doesn't spare himself.

And because he doesn't spare himself in revealing his flaws, I do not agree with the people who think that his persistent efforts to continue to publish and to appear in public despite ongoing death threats was motivated by greed or selfishness. All through the book he insists on the importance of defending free speech, of defending the artist's right to criticise any institution, idea, culture, or religion. And I believe he is absolutely right in that.

Although I have not been able to get into either of his novels which I've picked up (including, years ago, "The Satanic Verses") his style here is straightforward and accessible.

I think this is a valuable, important look at the creative process, the battle between fundamentalism (of any stripe) and freedom, and what it was like to live through an extrordinary, public ordeal.
( )

Self-regarding, self serving, gossipy and delicious. I can even forgive the name dropping and writing about himself in the third person, because he's just bloody good. And funny. ( )