Thursday, September 25, 2008

Salman Rushdie pictures




I found these pictures of me with Salman Rushdie at a PEN Conference in Barcelona. He was hiding at the time these pictures were taken. I checked the net to see if he's still hiding and got the following information:

"Rushdie won in 1988 the Whitbread Award with his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses...

"The novel was banned in India and South Africa and burned on the streets of Bradford, Yorkshire. When Ayatollah Khomeini called on all zealous Muslims to execute the writer and the publishers of the book, Rushdie was forced into hiding. Also an aide to Khomeini offered a million-dollar reward for Rushdie's death. In 1993 Rushdie's Norwegian publisher William Nygaard was wounded in an attack outside his house. In 1997 the reward was doubled, and the next year the highest Iranian state prosecutor Morteza Moqtadale renewed the death sentence...

"However, on September 1998 the Iranian government announced that the state is not going to put into effect the fatwa or encourage anybody to do so. According to interviews, Rushdie has decided to end his hiding. On February 1999 Ayatollah Hassan Sanei promised a 2,8 million dollar reward for killing the author."

Hmmmm, sounds like he still has to be careful.

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