The New York Times
…reminds us of [Rushdie's] fecund gift for language and his talent for explicating the psychological complexities of family and identity…a harrowing, deeply felt and revealing document: an autobiographical mirror of the big, philosophical preoccupations that have animated Mr. Rushdie's work throughout his career, from the collision of the private and the political in today's interconnected world to the permeable boundaries between life and art, reality and the imagination.
—Michiko Kakutani
The Washington Post
Joseph Anton is a splendid book, the finest new memoir to cross my desk in many a year. Some may complain that, at more than 600 pages, it is too long, but it never seemed so to me…To the contrary, the length of the book, and its wealth of quotidian detail, serve to draw the reader into the life that Rushdie was forced to lead, to make his isolation and fear palpable.
—Jonathan Yardley
From the Publisher
A splendid book, the finest . . . memoir to cross my desk in many a year.”—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post
“Action-packed . . . in a literary class by itself . . . Like Isherwood, Rushdie’s eye is a camera lens—firmly placed in one perspective and never out of focus. Instead it is the world that it photographs—a world temporarily gone mad—that shifts, blurs, sharpens and changes with a dizzying swiftness.” Los Angeles Review of Books
“Extraordinary . . . Joseph Anton beautifully modulates between [moments] of accidental hilarity, and the higher purpose Rushdie saw in opposing—at all costs—any curtailment on a writer’s freedom to say what he or she wants.”—The Boston Globe
“A gripping, firsthand account of an important battle for artistic freedom.”—Los Angeles Times
“Compelling, affecting . . . demonstrates Mr. Rushdie’s ability as a stylist and storyteller. . . . [He] reacted with great bravery and even heroism.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Gripping, moving and entertaining . . . nothing like it has ever been written.”—The Independent (UK)
“A thriller, an epic, a political essay, a love story, an ode to liberty.”—Le Point (France)
“Unflinchingly honest . . . an engrossing, exciting, revealing and often shocking book.”—de Volkskrant (The Netherlands)
“One of the best memoirs you may ever read.”—DNA (India)
NOVEMBER 2012 - AudioFile
On Valentine’s Day, 1989, Rushdie’s world turned upside down when he learned that the Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s religious leader, had placed a fatwa, or death sentence, on his head for writing the novel THE SATANIC VERSES. Forced to live underground, he adopted a name based on his favorite writers: Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov. This is his story. Narrator Sam Dastor starts out by reading in a low, scratchy, morose English–accented voice that overcompensates for the seriousness of Rushdie’s harrowing tale. As the book progresses, Dastor loses the scratchiness; his voice becomes more robust and confident, and he adopts a more defiant tone. This is where the book’s pace quickens, and we get the full sense of how the author literally survived his ordeal. Dastor would have been better off using it for the whole book. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
