The Satanic Verses received immediate and violent backlash from Muslims who found the book’s depictions of Islam insulting.
Within months of its publication, the novel was banned in a number of countries including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Sudan. His native country of India banned the book’s import.
The controversy also ignited violent protests and attacks on bookstores around the world. Multiple people connected to the novel were also under threat — including Hitoshi Igarashi, a Japanese scholar who translated the book, who was killed in 1991.
In 1989, Iran’s leader called for Rushdie’s assassination and a bounty was offered of several million dollars. Iran stepped back from the religious order, also known as a fatwa, in 1998, saying it would “neither support nor hinder assassination operations on Rushdie.” However, the order has not been officially withdrawn.
Rushdie wrote a memoir about his time in hiding that was published in 2012. He lived under the pseudonym Joseph Anton.
“One of the strangest aspects of it is that nobody thought that this was going to last very long,” he told NPR in 2012. “They said, ‘Just lie low for a few days and let the diplomats and politicians do their work, and this will be resolved.’ Instead, in the end, it took almost 12 years.”
In a statement, the literary freedom group PEN America said Rushdie was targeted for decades but “never flinched nor faltered.”
“We can think of no comparable incident of a public violent attack on a literary writer on American soil,” CEO Suzanne Nossel wrote. “We hope and believe fervently that his essential voice cannot and will not be silenced.”