Joseph Anton: Salman Rushdi

On February 14, 1989, on Valentine’s Day, Salman Rushdi called the BBC reporter and said that Ayatollah Khomeini sentenced him to death. It was then that the writer first heard the word “fatwa”. He was accused of the fact that his novel “Shaitan Ayayat” was directed “against Islam, the Prophet and the Qur’an.” Thus begins an incredible story about how the writer was forced to hide, move from home to the house, constantly under the protection of police officers. He was asked to come up with a pseudonym, a new name that could be called in the police. He remembered his beloved writers, chose the names of Konrad and Chekhov. And Joseph Anton was born.

Author
Rushdi Salman
Translator
Motylev L. Yu., Karelsky Dmitry Albertovich
Publisher
Corpus, 2012