Ian McEwan: I Sheltered Rushdie After 1989 Fatwa

Novelist reveals how he protected his friend
By Jason Farago,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 16, 2009 7:55 AM CST
Ian McEwan: I Sheltered Rushdie After 1989 Fatwa
Writer Salman Rushdie attends the after party for the premiere of 'Our City Dreams' at Thom Bar at the Thompson Hotel on February 4, 2009 in New York City.    (Getty Images)

Twenty years after the Iranian leadership declared a death sentence on Salman Rushdie, fellow novelist Ian McEwan reveals that he sheltered the writer in a house in the English countryside. In a long profile of McEwan in the New Yorker, the novelist describes how the pair listened to news of the Rushdie fatwa on the radio after the publication of The Satanic Verses. But Rushdie didn't linger. "He had to move on," McEwan says. "Terrible time for him."
(More Salman Rushdie stories.)

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