On 14 February 1989, Salman Rushdie was sentenced to death by the Ayatollah Khomeini, guilty of having written The Satanic Verses, a book 'against Islam'. In this memoir he tells the story of the nine years that followed, describing his life as a writer forced underground, moving from house to house, always with an armed police protection team, struggling to be free of the fatwa and living under another name - Joseph Anton.