Iran will pursue makers of anti-Islam film: vice-president

We are meeting to discuss Rushdie's longest-running role, his 13-year performance as a character called Joseph Anton. This was the pseudonym he took after going into hiding following the fatwa declared upon him by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini on Valentine's Day 1989. His protection officers suggested he choose another name to increase his security when he turned up at a new home (though being flanked by four armed men in bulletproof Jaguars usually did the trick). "Probably better not to make it an Indian name," counselled his minder Stan. And so, Rushdie writes, he became "an invisible man in a whiteface mask". Joseph was Conrad's first name, Anton was Chekhov's. He was Mr Anton until March 27 2002, when the police Jaguars finally drove out of his life for the last time.

That pseudonym now supplies the title for his new 636-page memoir. Why would he want to revisit those years? During that time his first wife Clarissa died of cancer, his second and third marriages broke up, his fourth was shaky, his Japanese editor was murdered, his Norwegian publisher shot, his Italian translator stabbed, hundreds died in riots protesting against his novel, his books were burned from Bradford to Islamabad, he did things that still make him burn with shame and he found that writers he admired such as John Berger and John Le Carré, both writing in the Guardian, attacked him for not withdrawing the novel.