(AFP) After decades spent in the shadow of a death sentence pronounced by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Salman Rushdie is quietly defiant.
“I don’t want to live hidden away,” he told AFP during a visit to Paris.
The novelist’s life changed forever on February 14, 1989, when Iran’s spiritual leader ordered Rushdie’s execution after branding his novel “The Satanic Verses” blasphemous.
Like a kind of reverse Valentine, Tehran renewed the fatwa year after year.
Rushdie, who some say is the greatest writer India has produced since Tagore, spent 13 years living under a false name and constant police protection.
“I was 41 back then, now I am 71. Things are fine now,” he said in September.
