Rushdie Reflects

The Satanic Video -Bill Keller

Salman Rushdie's new memoir recounts a decade under a clerical death sentence for the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses. The fatwa was dropped in 1998 and Rushdie is out of hiding, but he is still careful.


In his new book, Rushdie recounts being urged by the British authorities who were protecting him to "lower the temperature" by issuing a statement that could be taken for an apology. He does so. It fills him almost immediately with regret, and the attacks on him are unabated. He "had taken the weak position and was therefore treated as a weakling," he writes.
(New York Times)
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