Joseph Anton
by Salman Rushdie
A Memoir
- Percentage of approved critics who have given this book a positive review.
Critic Rating
68%
Critic Reviews: 50
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- User rating from iDreamBooks & iTunes
Reader Rating
80%
Reader Ratings: 220
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Synopsis
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... more
About Salman Rushdie
Published: September 18, 2012 by
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs, Political & Social Sciences, Religion & Spirituality. Non-fiction. 656 pages
- All Critics: 50
- Positive: 35
- Negative: 15
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The New York Times | 12 Oct 2012
...with “Joseph Anton,” is he risking becoming the kind of writer whose books are not so much read as skimmed for their potential provocations
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The Guardian | 18 Sep 2012
Too long, over-dependent on Rushdie's journals, and unquickened by hindsight, or its prose.
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The Guardian | 22 Sep 2012
Salman Rushdie's account of surviving a fatwa is brutally honest and profound
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AV Club | 22 Oct 2012
The early sections of the book contain some marvelous material.
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Business Week | 4 Oct 2012
Part of the book’s fascination stems from its juicy portrayals of various publishing luminaries.
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The Telegraph | 21 Sep 2012
But the memoir is inordinately long, and the drama of the fatwa, and the obvious hell of living in its shadow, gets swamped by a sort of literary luvvie-dom, with dinners and launch parties.
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The Washington Times | 14 Nov 2012
As it is, Mr. Rushdie seems to have used this book as an opportunity to rail against anyone — public figures, writers, politicians — he thinks did not give him sufficient support.
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USA Today | 17 Sep 2012
This is an important book...because of its implications about our times and fanatical religious intolerance in a frighteningly fragile world.
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The Boston Globe | 22 Sep 2012
The day-to-day story is gripping and, weirdly, often hilarious.
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Washington Post | 16 Sep 2012
“Joseph Anton” is a splendid book, the finest new memoir to cross my desk in many a year.
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National Post | 2 Oct 2012
The umpteenth line in the vein of “He went out with Ian McEwan to get Thai takeout” makes the work feel under-edited.
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San Francisco Chronicle | 21 Sep 2012
In 10 dramatic chapters, "Joseph Anton" captures the career of a fallible writer who struggled to sustain the fragile life of the imagination.
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Times Live | 11 Dec 2012
Exquisite writing and the odd moment of insight are not enough to rescue the memoir...after 656 pages, Joseph Anton leaves us with little more than a bad taste in the mouth.
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The Wall Street Journal | 17 Sep 2012
Defenders of Enlightenment values...must acknowledge the fact that, when threatened, Salman Rushdie—Joseph Anton—reacted with great bravery and even heroism.
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The Star | 18 Sep 2012
...anyone who reads it will hopefully conclude that, when it comes to free speech, personality is necessarily beside the point.
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The Commentator | 24 Sep 2012
The most interesting parts of the memoir are those that deal with the aftermath of the life changing fatwa.
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Cairo 360 | 12 Oct 2012
It’s nauseating and grotesque, bordering on megalomania.
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Kirkus Reviews | 15 Oct 2012
...a spy novel, a writer’s autobiography and a victim’s affidavit pulsing with resentment and fear combine to reveal a man’s dawning awareness of the primacy of freedom.
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The Globe and Mail | 22 Sep 2012
That is why Joseph Anton, both the man and the book, are so important. They are vital reminders of the continuing importance of an unswerving defence, in Rushdie’s words, “of debate, of dispute, of dissent.”
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Time Out New York | 3 Oct 2012
Rushdie’s prose is precise and his description of his circumstances focused. The story abounds in paradoxes...that lend it a power beyond its already-gripping subject.
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Express | 30 Sep 2012
This moving, sometimes irritating, often beautiful and blissfully funny memoir is also a resounding manifesto, reminding us that novelists have a right and duty to tackle the most controversial subjects.
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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | 7 Oct 2012
Mr. Rushdie dwells on the uninteresting details rather than how his exile changed him as an individual and a writer.
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Taipei Times | 23 Oct 2012
True fans of the author will gain tremendously from reading the book in its entirety, as it yields invaluable information about the context in which his future novels took shape.
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The New York Times | 12 Oct 2012
In early sections — among the best in the book — the author reveals that his actual surname was itself an invention.
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Business Week | 4 Oct 2012
In an age of rising intolerance and diminished literary confidence, Joseph Anton—like Rushdie’s own life—strikes a blow for the continued relevance of literature.
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Hindustan Times | 22 Sep 2012
Salman Rushdie’s attempt to not let fear rule his life.
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The Coffin Factory | 10 Oct 2012
The best response Rushdie can give is to keep publishing books just as fine as this one.
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The New York Times | 17 Sep 2012
...a memoir, coming after several disappointing novels, that reminds us of his fecund gift for language and his talent for explicating the psychological complexities of family and identity.
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USA Today | 17 Sep 2012
Rushdie provides a fascinating look into the intense drama of how those years of death threats, bookstore bombings, attacks and murders affected U.S. and British publishing circles...
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The Telegraph | 20 Sep 2012
Written in the third person, like a novel, Joseph Anton has the effect of distancing its author from its subject.
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Of Books and Reading | 29 Sep 2012
The book, “Joseph Anton” is the most human that I have read this year. Salman Rushdie is angry and is hurt and hides no emotions.
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Star Tribune | 22 Sep 2012
Given the extraordinary nature of his decade in exile, Rushdie dwells on the uninteresting details rather than how his exile changed him as an individual and a writer.
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Digital Journal | 21 Sep 2012
The book is written in the third person, as though Joseph Anton is a character in a novel...This choice of narration is ostensibly a distancing device, but it lends an awkward, artificial, almost surreal feel to the description of events.
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The Independent | 30 Sep 2012
Yet it is also the most gripping, moving and entertaining literary memoir I have ever read.
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Publishers Weekly | 24 Sep 2012
Preening self-dramatization by the celebrity author.
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Wall Street Journal | 25 Sep 2012
A valuable account of what it was like for Mr. Rushdie to live in hiding, fearing for his life while trying to carve moments of normality.
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Salon | 5 Nov 2012
Salman Rushdie's book adopts the tropes of genre fiction, and reveals why confessional literature inevitably fails
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The New York Review of Books | 20 Dec 2012
Some readers may find, by the end of Joseph Anton, that the world feels rather smaller and grimmer than before. But they should not be unduly alarmed. The world is as large and as wide as it ever was; it’s just Rushdie who got small.
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Cairo 360 | 12 Oct 2012
Anyone who thinks highly of Rushdie better leave this book on the shelves of the bookshop, for fear of instant nausea and general disliking of its author.
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About.com | 1 Sep 2012
The more casual reader, however, will have some issues.
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The New Yorker | 17 Sep 2012
It is the sometimes impossibly difficult political and moral work of Rushdie and the rest of us to go on defending freedom of expression even when the object at the center of things is as indefensibly offensive as “Innocence of Muslims” and its countless kin.
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Bloomberg | 16 Sep 2012
While he shows himself to be at times a terrible husband and a selfish father, as a writer he does, after a wobble or two, do the right thing. He finds his voice again and he speaks up.
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RTE Ten | 3 Oct 2012
Aside from the vivid, splendidly told account of his childhood and family background, Rushdie's book charts in, fascinating, grimly humourous detail, the shadowy half-life he lived until that fatwah was lifted on March 27, 2002.
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Los Angeles Times | 23 Sep 2012
"Joseph Anton" also turns out to be a fascinating character study.
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The New York Times | 12 Oct 2012
It’s of course lots of fun to read of the author’s unflagging bedazzlement at mingling with all kinds of celebrities, from Playboy bunnies to heads of state, and in his access, post-fatwa, to every sort of party.
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The New York Times | 17 Sep 2012
...a memoir...that reminds us of his fecund gift for language and his talent for explicating the psychological complexities of family and identity.
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The Star | 18 Sep 2012
Joseph Anton probably won’t convince anyone that Rushdie isn’t arrogant, but anyone who reads it will hopefully conclude that, when it comes to free speech, personality is necessarily beside the point.
Full ReviewJoseph Anton: A Memoir