Rushdie to write fatwa account
24.02.10 | Katie Allen in The Bookseller

Man Booker-winning author Salman Rushdie is to write a book about the decade he spent under a fatwa issued by the Iranian government.

The author discussed the proposed title at Emory University, where an exhibition of his personal papers including manuscripts, letters and photos, opens on Friday. Rushdie is a lecturer at the Atlanta-based university.

"It's my story, and at some point, it needs to be told," he said, according to the Washington Post. "That point is getting closer, I think. When it was in cardboard boxes and dead computers, it would have been very, very difficult, but now it's all organised."

Rushdie, now 62, was forced into hiding in 1989 after the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a religious edict, ordering Muslims to kill the author and claiming his book The Satanic Verses insulted Islam. In 1998, the Iranian goverment said it would not support the fatwa but could not rescind it.