Salman Rushdie

discusses

Joseph Anton:
A Memoir

in conversation with GISH JEN

Tickets are on sale now.

Tickets are $35 and include one admission and one copy of Joseph Anton.

Please note: Customers purchasing tickets online will not be able to pick up their book until the day of the event.

This event includes a book signing

Date

Oct
9
Tuesday
October 9, 2012
7:00 PM ET

Location

First Parish Church
1446 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets

Havard Book Store is pleased to welcome Booker Prize winner SALMAN RUSHDIE for a discussion of his new memoir, Joseph Anton.

On February 14, 1989, Valentine’s Day, Salman Rushdie was telephoned by a BBC journalist and told that he had been “sentenced to death” by the Ayatollah Khomeini. For the first time he heard the word fatwa. His crime? To have written a novel called The Satanic Verses, which was accused of being “against Islam, the Prophet and the Quran.”
 
So begins the extraordinary story of how a writer was forced underground, moving from house to house, with the constant presence of an armed police protection team. He was asked to choose an alias that the police could call him by. He thought of writers he loved and combinations of their names; then it came to him: Conrad and Chekhov—Joseph Anton.
 
How do a writer and his family live with the threat of murder for more than nine years? How does he go on working? How does he fall in and out of love? How does despair shape his thoughts and actions, how and why does he stumble, how does he learn to fight back? In this remarkable memoir Rushdie tells that story for the first time; the story of one of the crucial battles, in our time, for freedom of speech. He talks about the sometimes grim, sometimes comic realities of living with armed policemen, and of the close bonds he formed with his protectors; of his struggle for support and understanding from governments, intelligence chiefs, publishers, journalists, and fellow writers; and of how he regained his freedom.
 
Signing information (Updated): Please note that at this event, Mr. Rushdie will only be signing Joseph Anton, and up to one backlist title per person. In addition, he will not be able to personalize any signed books.

Gish Jen
Gish Jen

Gish Jen

Gish Jen's fiction and nonfiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, and dozens of anthologies and textbooks. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she has been the recipient of a Lannan Literary Award as well as a five-year Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has also held NEA, Fulbright, Guggenheim, and Radcliffe fellowships; has been awarded honorary doctorates from Emerson College and Williams College; delivered the William E. Massey lectures in the History of American Civilization at Harvard in 2012; and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the MacArthur Foundation. Her ninth and most recent book is a collection of stories spanning the 50 years since the opening of China to the West. It is entitled Thank You, Mr. Nixon.

Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie is the author of fourteen previous novels, including Midnight’s Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker), Shame, The Satanic Verses, The Moor’s Last Sigh, and Quichotte, all of which have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize; a collection of stories, East, West; a memoir, Joseph Anton; a work of reportage, The Jaguar Smile; and three collections of essays, most recently Languages of Truth. His many awards include the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, which he won twice; the PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award; the National Arts Award; the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger; the European Union’s Aristeion Prize for Literature; the Budapest Grand Prize for Literature; and the Italian Premio Grinzane Cavour. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. He is a former president of PEN America and the recipient of the PEN Centenary Courage Award. His books have been translated into over forty languages. In 2023, he was named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People of the Year.

Photo Credit: Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Online ticket sales for this event have ended. Tickets can still be purchased in the store and over the phone at 617-661-1515 until about 5:30pm. After that, if there are any remaining tickets available, they can be purchased when the doors open around 6:30pm.

Tickets are non-refundable and only guarantee a seat up until five minutes before the event begins. If for any reason a ticket holder cannot attend the event, books can be picked up at Harvard Book Store after the event.

Please note that tickets purchased online and included books may only be picked up at the venue the night of the event and cannot be picked up in-store beforehand.

First Parish Church
1446 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Walking from the Harvard Square T station: 2 minutes

As you exit the station, cross Mass. Ave. and look for the newsstand called Crimson Corner. Turn right and proceed north along Mass. Ave. going toward the Cambridge Common. You will pass the Harvard Coop, Bank of America, and CVS. The First Parish Church is located at the corner of Mass. Ave. and Church St. Please enter through the front door of the church.

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