soil, and 1300 acres of that site are so profoundly contaminated that they can never, ever be opened for human habitation. and the rest of the site is slated to open as a national wildlife refuge for hiking and biking and possibly even hunting. so even though there's still a great deal of contamination on the site, and there's a lot of home building and shopping malls and highways and all sorts of things going on out there. so i felt that even though in california and in the country as a whole i think we would like to forget that rocky flats ever happened, it's a story we would like to put in the past and pretend it's all fixed and we don't have to deal with it anymore, but the truth of the matter is that it's a very important story we will have to continue to deal with now and into the future. blew -- plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years. >> you can watch this anytime on line at booktv.org.

>> salman rushdie recounts the fatwa issued against him in 1989 which was deemed, quote, against islam, the prophet and the quran, end quote. this is about an hour, 20. [applause] >> thank you very much. thank you. and welcome to this evening's conversation with salman rushdie. i want to just begin by explaining that in march of 1992 i interviewed mr. rushdie for the first time. it was near dulles airport. i had to meet a stranger at a hotel bar who would take me to his secret location. i'd know him by the fact that he was carrying a "wall street journal" -- [laughter] and we had a lengthy interview by my standards. and i went back today to read what salman rushdie said in that

interview and what i said in many introducing it. and i realize that what i wrote 20 years ago is equally true today. here's what i wrote: there's one thing i'd like to say before anything else, and that is that he wrote "midnight's children," a brilliant novel about india that had me in stitches several years ago. for that week alone, i would want to interview salman rushdie and would probably even go to some out of the way hotel and meet some designated intermediary and then go somewhere else to do it. needless to say, he's no longer famous for simply writing good novels, and his popularity is not the reason for such bizarre arrangements. he is famous because "the satanic verses" was deemed palace blasphemous by the ayatollah khomeini. he has been in hiding in britain mostly, protected by the security police. so here's what you told me in 1992. you said i really think that before this year is out, this

thing will be over. [laughter] your sue done mouse alter ego, joseph anton lived on for quite a while. >> i was just ten years long. [laughter] >> what was it like thinking this thing was about to be settled and then being dashed all the time? >> i think that -- the problem of how long it went on was very difficult to write about. it wasn't that there were people shooting at me through the window. it wasn't dramatic. it was just this sense that it was never going to end. it just went on and on and on which is why i use somewhere in the book this image from an argentinean write where he talks about the pampas in argentina. he says you can't take a photograph of them. they look like a field. that's it.

the only way you experience them is by traveling through them. and then they just go on and on and on and on and on and on, and they're always the same, and they go on and on, and they're always the same, and they go on and on and on, and they're always the same. >> uh-huh. >> and that's what it was like. it was like, it was like being in that situation of a situation that just endlessly went on. >> and during that time you could not live in your own home. >> that's right. >> you lived in the company of the police. >> yes. yeah, that was -- i mean, a lot of people thought that i was in sort of isolation somewhere, but actually it was the opposite of isolation. i was living with four enormous men with guns. [laughter] and who weren't close friends. [laughter]

i mean, we became quite close. >> yeah. >> but it was, it was sometimes the problem was not isolation, but claustrophobia. >> yeah. and you managed to write. >> eventually, up and down, yeah. i mean, i think the thing that saved me was that i'm a novelist. if i'd been a playwright, supposing the satanic verses had been a play or a movie, if i'd been a movie director, it would have been virtually impossible for me to continue with my protbetion, you know, because of the difficulty of getting a play put on or a movie made. but writers are used to sitting in rooms and staring out the window and wondering what the hell to do. [laughter] >> there you are. >> so in a way i was trained for this. [laughter] >> what you said about the image of the pampas, never knowing when it's over, it reminded me of a sensation in new york right after 9/11 which was with

hindsight we can say there was a moment when we knew that had happened. but for a couple of days we didn't know, there could be another plane. one doesn't know when these things are over. there are many ways in which what we experienced seems to foreshadow things that we all came to experience. >> well, i mean, that's, you know, that's what i very strongly came to feel, that what happened -- the case of "the satanic verses" was a harbiner, you know? it was a prologue in some way. and i think that's one of the reasons why it was so, often so badly understood. when it first circulated in the west why it was so badly understood, because we had no narrative to fit it into, you know in it seemed to come out of nowhere, this sort of strange, medievalist attack, you know, using accusations of things we hadn't heard about since the spanish inquisition, you know? heresy, apostasy, you know,

these crimes. and people thought, what the hell is this? and then it was easy for people then to think, well, we don't understand this because it's all sort of weird and foreign, but he understands it, and so if he's upset them all so much, he must have done something really bad. >> yeah. >> and it was very easy for people to do that because, as i say, they didn't have a larger frame. and what gradually happened over the next decade, next 20 years was that people began to understand the larger narrative and, of course, the 9/11 attack you could say is the main event. >> let's talk about this idea that some of your detractors, i guess -- one thing we learn is that if we're ever targeted by a fatwa death sentence and are consigned to safehouses, every perceived flaw in our character will be published in the media in time. >> yes. >> if your history -- >> and not just flaws in our

character, flaws in our appearance too. >> yes, everything. [laughter] well, it was argued, hmm, look, you wrote daringly about an area where given the state of leadership in islam in 1989 you were knocking on a door that was certainly possible some ogre would come jumping out of it. you pays your money, you takes your chances. >> yeah. well, that's a plausible argument, isn't it? except that one of the -- seems to me -- one of the greatest things about the history of literature is that writers have always taken on ogres, you know? writers have always in every country in the world taken on tyrants and pointed at them and called them by their name. you know, when the poem about stalin was written, he knew perfectly well who stalin was. you know, loorka knew who franco

was. it's the history of literature, it's of poets and writers and artists standing up and telling the truth about tyrants to their face. and it's one of the noble things about literature. to say that that's what you mustn't do, is to diminish, i think, what writers have done. >> that we, we have a stake in the writer of fiction feeling defended in being courageous and taking on ogres. >> yeah. i mean, is it shelley who said that writers were the unacknowledged legislators of mankind which may be putting it a bit high -- >> right. >> but then he's a romantic poet. [laughter] but i think it's that speaking truth to power, you know, that business of saying i don't care who you are, here's what i think of you. >> but -- >> it's a good thing. >> but you were speaking truth to power in a very important way, and it's the imagination of the artist being free to speak

truth to power. and an election wasn't going to depend on you getting this scoop. you weren't going to call out the government for its lies. it's something very different from that. >> yeah. and also, you know, "the satanic verses" wasn't even primarily a novel about islam. it was the most of it, um, was a novel about migration, it was a novel about people coming from the indian subcontinent and settling in -- [inaudible] and the consequences of that. and in the middle of it, there's this dream sequence, you know? there's this dream sequence in which there's a prophet not called muhammad, inventing a religion not called islam in a city not called mecca. and this is a dream, and it's a dream in the mind of somebody who's going insane. now, this is what we in the trade call fiction. [laughter] [applause] that would be the technical term for it.

[laughter] but instead i had one of the strangest accusations of all the strange accusations that was leveled against me, but from quarters of the islamic world. it was as if there's a suspicion about fiction itself. you know, fiction was being proposed as being something which conceals the true motives of the writer. so whereas most of us who practice it think that fiction is a way of revealing truth, not concealing it, but anyway, i heard it a thousand times, people said he is hiding behind his fiction. >> your real agenda. >> yeah, my real agenda is concealed in this fiendish make believe. >> uh-huh. >> you know? and i thought this is, this is really one way of describing it that it's a category mistake, you know? it's people reading fiction as if it's simply disguised fact. and so, for instance, in this dream sequence when this religion is being born and there

are adversaries abusing the newly-faithful, you know, and jeering at them, you know, which happened. i mean, the early history of islam was persecuted. so how do you show persecution without showing the persecutors doing the persecuting? can't do it. >> right. >> so, and then if the things the persecutors say when they're persecuting the persecuted people, the author is accused of agreeing with them, right? he means what they mean. >> uh-huh. >> suddenly, you realize what they mean by disguising fact by fiction, because they -- it was the assumption that i was on the side of the persecutors. >> if you could put those words on paper, clearly -- >> yeah. clearly, i must mean them. >> you must mean them. >> yeah. so this was of a, it was a kind of surrealist experience.

i mean, i often think that of the three, the great trinity of 20th century writers who invented modern literature which is joyce, proost and kafka, seems to me that kafka is the one that got it most nearly right. we live in the kafkaesque, you know? and one of the characteristics is that at the same time as being dark and scary, it's very funny. um, and i remember i used to say to my friends at the time that -- i said, you know, if this stuff wasn't not funny at all, it would be quite funny. [laughter] i mean, for instance, quite soon after it all began there was this interview that i saw on british television with a rather sweet looking elderly british muslim leader who had been one of the organizers of the demonstrations. you know, he had a sweet silver

beard, very neatly trimmed and so on. and soft-voiced, gentle, elderly bloke, you know? and the tv interviewer said to him had he read "the satanic verses." he looked shocked. no, no, he said, of course not. and the interviewer said, well, this is not mr. rushdie's first book. you know, in fact, it's his my beth book. and he's written a number of -- fifth book. and he's written a number of newspaper articles and short stories, so on. have you ever read anything that he's written? and this gent sweetly, disarmingly, with this kind of gesture -- [laughter] he said, you know, books are not my thing. [laughter] burning books, however -- >> burning books.

[laughter] we should get to this, the, you know, your global adversary or your global pursuer in this was the ayatollah in iran. >> yes. >> but within britain the very, members of the very immigrant wave that you'd been writing about -- >> yeah. >> -- organized a book burning. people seemed at least comfortable with the idea of the vigilante death sentence against you since -- >> yeah. >> -- had the benefit of clergy. and some outright endorsements of he should die for it. this was a domestic british issue, and you at one point -- and this, i guess s the point of greatest regret for you -- you sat down with a group of the leaders of this moment. >> yeah. >> and it's a very vivid scene you describe in a very special police station. take us there. >> padding on the green police station in london is the sort of police station that was basically built to interrogate

and house captured members of the ira. so it was built as kind of terrorist holding station. and this was the place where i was told was the only place i'd be allowed to meet these people. and, i mean, look, the point is i was in a very bad state of mind. i was very -- this was about two years into it. it was late -- it was christmas 1990 is when this was, christmas eve, i think, 990. 1990. and, first of all, i was very worn down by the endlessness of it, and that was only two year, you know? also i was very worn down by this public rhetoric that was getting louder and louder in england, i mean, partly there conservative politicians, partly from bits of the, you know, the news media, but also even from the public at large. i remember there would be these opinion polls published in which substantial majorities of the british public were of the view that this was my fault, and it was up to me to do something to

fix it, you know? you broke it, you fix it. all this pressure really took its toll, and that's what suckered me, really, into this meeting with these islamic worthies who claimed they could sort it all out if i would just have a meeting with them and make friends. >> yeah. >> and when i arrived they showed me this very badly-typed piece of paper with spegging mistakes -- spelling mistakes and, you know, gras mattal errors, things that offend me telephone. [laughter] [applause] >> i don't think this was the most clever way to appeal to your vanity about the profession. >> i said, look, it's not grammatical. they said, no, no, you can rewrite it, you're the writer. [laughter] >> yeah. >> i said, yeah, so i am. but the problem is that in this text that they had used, it was what they considered to be the

price of the ticket which is that i had to make this declaration of religious faith which was clearly absurd because i have less religion than you could inscribe on a chewed-off fingernail. [laughter] [applause] but, you know, weakly and shamefully i got, i got -- i was just so desperate to break this logjam that i signed this document. >> right. >> and immediately that i left the police station and taken away in the armored cars, and i realized i'd done something very, very stupid. i felt like i'd ripped the tongue out of my own throat, i'd lost my own language, and i'd, you know, i'd lied. and i began -- i almost threw up in the back of the police car which was -- i'm glad i didn't because the windows didn't come down because -- [laughter] because they were all -- anyway

it was a bad moment for me. it was kind of like i think it's described in the book as being a moment of kind of hitting bottom, and i think it was. but in retrospect i came to think of o it as beneficial to me because i think, you know, it was a clarifying moment. it showed me something that i hadn't looked at before, which is that there was no way of making everybody like me. >> yeah. >> you know? that there was nothing that i could do. and that, actually, it was dangerous to try and make everybody like you. it led you into a trap. it led you into areas of compromise about things that should not be compromised about. and i just at that point thought, the hell with this. no more appeasement, no more apology, no more atonement, you know? be -- fuck it.

[applause] and i just think from that moment on i, in a way, it taught me how to fight, you know? instead of just -- it just taught me just stand up for it. for what you've done, what you believe in and what's right. people don't like it, they don't like it. and so although it was an awful moment for me, a really sickening moment in my life, i think out of it came, you know, out of it to put it bluntly came the person that i was able to become. so there we are, yeah. >> back to some of the, the difficulties of living as you did. >> yes. >> when you were under protection which often verged on confinement, another 9/11 parallel for those who wonder did we give up much of our freedom in order to be secure in the threat of terrorism.

you were being told routinely i don't think you'll be allowed to do that. >> yes. >> you may not go visit him. your son can only come here under these particular measures. you're being protected, but protection meant great curtailment of -- >> well, also, the truth is that every single other person in england who received police protection received it by living in their own house, you know? they didn't have to go underground in some way. they lived at home, and the uniform police protected the property, and the special secret police, you know, looked after them when they went about their daily business, and they went about their daily business. there was no attempt to say you have to disappear. and -- except for me. and i've often thought that i made a mistake, you know? that, i mean, if i had it to do again, i might just say, you know what? i've got a house over there. i'm going home. you want to protect me, that's

where you'll find me. >> yeah. >> it would have been more dangerous, but maybe it would have been a little more dignified, perhaps. >> just how dangerous it was, the best you could do was to learn that somebody had had credible information that there had actually been a plot somewhere. >> yeah. i mean, that did happen several finals. i did go, you know, one of the strange things is i got into some very strange places. and i actually went into that building on the thames which you see on james bond movies, you know, where judi dench is inside. [laughter] >> not m, but c. >> yes. the head of the secret service is called c. anyway, yes, i met all these people. actually, i came to admire them quite a lot. i mean, i thought they were really smart and really tough and really knew what they were talking about. and i thought, um, that it was quite good in a way to have them on my side. >> you told me 20 years ago in a

strange hotel near dulles airport that you found these people sophisticated and interesting, and you would talk with them, and you would kid them, but you would write the book that would blow the lid off the life of the secret police. >> yes. >> there are a few moments in this book when you talk about the ease with which someone whose life is entirely secret and goes off to undisclosed places, it's the perfect cover for having extra extramarital a, one that was indulged in pretty often. >> ask dick cheney, the other person who was in an undisclosed location. [laughter] [applause] but, yeah, it was -- it's perfect cover -- >> perfect cover. >> -- for fooling around. >> yeah. >> honey, i've got to go away on business, it's really secret, i can't tell you anything about it. >> when i come back, i can't tell you -- >> no, no, i can't tell you where i'm going, but i'm going to be away for eight days. >> some of your protecters

did -- >> yeah, they did. >> when you say "some," it was more accurately all. [laughter] one of them i can tell you about because he got found out. one of the guys that was with me for a while was a bigamist. he had two families, two wives, two sets of children, and he'd taken the precaution of giving both wives and sets of children the same loving nicknames. [laughter] >> so there's no risk of forgetting -- >> so he would never make a mistake. wherever he went he called them whatever he called them, you know? he only got caught because he was not a very -- [inaudible] he was a detective or sergeant, i think, and he was just getting into debt. so they caught him because he was broke, going into debt, but not -- otherwise he was caught. >> in addition to the real life building where the fictional character m works --

>> yes. >> you had to have surgery at one point. you needed a medical treatment. >> yeah. i mean, i had a problem with my eyelids which is a medical problem where, -- it's a condition called tosis where basically -- how much do you want to know about this? >> you can just say it begins with a p and people can look it up. >> i had to have this repaired, and went to the hospital, and it wasn't an operation on my eyes, but nevertheless, i was in this place with my head bandaged and came out of the surgery in the middle of the night. and said, hello, and nobody answered. i said hello again, and nobody answered. and i thought, what in. [laughter] i mean, literally, i didn't know where i was, etc. >> yeah. >> and it just happened to be -- i picked the moment i'd picked

to emerge from anesthesia was the moment in which the night nurse had gone to the bathroom. so there was nobody there. but it was an extraordinary moment. it was just, i mean, a minute or some two minutes, but to be blindfolded and not know where you are and not even know what condition your eyes are in, it was a moment. >> and in a very special hospital, i gather, a very -- >> yeah. everything's a very, you know, everything i did was in some kind of maximum security place where, you know, the royal family and -- >> be they would have their surgeries there. >> they would have their surgeries there. don't ask what the royal family surges are, you don't want to know. [laughter] >> this is a memoir, and it's not just the story of you and trying to get "the satanic verses" published in paperback which was quite a struggle, but it's also about your life.

at the beginning of this saga, you had one wife and one ex-wife. by the end of it you had had four ex-wives, one of whom deceased by the end of the story. at the beginning you had one young son, by the end of it he's a young adult, and you have another son. i mean, your -- you were living a, to put it mildly, an active life even under, within this shell of protection that you're having. [laughter] >> you know, there was this, there was this moment when -- 990 somewhere when i was interviewed by mike wallace for "60 minutes." >> yeah. >> he came to whatever undisclosed location. >> yep. >> and at that point it had just become known that i had broken up with my then-wife mary ann wiggins. so, like, the second question -- "60 minutes" -- the second question he asked was, so, your

marriage ended. i said, yes. he said, what do you do about sex? [laughter] >> that's a very highly-rated program, "60 minutes." >> i thought, i thought, this is the most important political show on american television, and the second question is about fucking someone? [laughter] as it happened, i had by then through great good fortune met elizabeth west who became my wife and was the mother of my youngest son, but i wasn't going to tell mike wallace that. [laughter] it was one of those magic moments when the right words just dropped into my mind, and i said, well, you know, mike, to tell you the truth, i'm really grateful for the rest. [laughter] and he looked, he looked so shocked. [laughter] that i had to say something like, you know, just kidding, mike. [laughter] anyway, that's mike wallace and me. [laughter] >> now, in addition to your

family life changing quite a bit over this time, during that time you wrote -- [inaudible] you wrote "the ground beneath her feet." i think you wrote the enchan tres later -- >> no, the first one i wrote was -- [inaudible] >> right. >> yeah. a collection of stories east west and -- [inaudible conversations] >> yeah, i did my job. as i say, i really think that the fact that i was able to do my job by just sitting in a room and writing was an enormous part of what saved my life. i could, you know, i could be myself. >> i was trying to figure out whether i thought your, how much your writing was influenced by the experience. >> yeah. >> and it does seem to me that the moor's last sigh, celebrating in memory of moorish spain and the moment of great cultural cooperation between

islam, christianity and judaism -- >> that's something that, you know, what that book really came out of was something else. what was growing in india at that time was not a, not an islamic, but a hindu fanaticism. the rise of extremist hindu nationalism. and one important aspect of that was to raise the issue of authenticity. what was an authentic indian? and the hindu nationalist answer was that only the hindu experience of india was authentically indian. and what it meant was that all the minorities, of course, the largest minority being the muslim religion, were inauthentic. and i found that annoying. and so i was about to take the

south indian jewish community and then create an even smaller minority by having somebody from that community marry into a south indian catholic family, thus creating a catholic/jewish individual who was probably a minority of one person, you know? [laughter] in a country of a billion people. and then show that you could actually grow the whole experience of india out of that one person. you know? so that everybody in india is authentically indian is what i wanted to say, you know? and not just any particular devotional group. [applause] and, i mean, the novel came out of that desire to, um, to rescue what it was to be an indian from the, from the spurious logic of this kind of take. um, yeah.

>> we -- you talked earlier about literature and the role of the writer, the fiction writer, and can at the end of the book there's actually a wonderful peon to literature that you write and talk about the important purposes of fiction. this raises a question, well, that came up in a kind of a public feud that you had with john mccarrie on the pages of the guardian which is, is the freedom of expression the domain of the literary artist, or his phrase was does the person who writes pulp have the same freedom of experience? i would, given recent weeks, broaden that to the completely artless, trashy video producer who writes something that may even be calculated to offend? >> freedom the speak crap, you know? it's not only for artists, it's

also for garbage makers, you know? the like that, like the whatever his name is. i don't think he even knows what his name is. [laughter] i mean, there's an episode in the book something that happened to me, i mean, there was this film made in pakistan in the early '90s called international guerrillas which was about a group of what one might now call al-qaeda terrorists whose job it was to find and kill me. and when they did so, that would be the happy ending, right? >> right. >> now, the character, the me character was shown living what looked like an island in the philippines -- >> protected by israeli soldiers. >> protected by the israeli secret service. you know, all writers have these holiday homes. [laughter] and at one point there was of one of the international

guerrillas gets captured by the israeli secret service and gets brought -- the me character is depicted as having a bottle of, you know, jack daniel's in this one hand swigging away like that. and in the other happened he has, like, either a whip or a similar tar with which he flakes his vital lust on people pause that's the kind of guy -- because that's the kind of guy i am. [laughter] anyway, the national guerrilla is tied up between a couple of palm trees and i'm there to torture him. then i have a better idea. i say take him away and read to him from "the satanic verses" all night. [laughter] and, of course, he totally cracks, you know? [laughter] you know, not that, anything but that. >> there is this pakistani movie -- >> this movie which is hugely defamatory, and in the end of the film, i do get killed by

flying qurans unleashing bolts of lightning. [laughter] >> right, right. >> you know, personally fried by the almighty. you know? >> right. [laughter] >> i thought, well, there's dignity in that. myway, the film gets banned in england. the film's refused a certificate because it's defamatory and because the certifying body is told if they give it a certificate, i can sue them too for defaming me. so i have, i decided i can't do this. i'm fighting a free speech battle, i can't be defended by an act of censorship. so i have to write to the british board of film classification and formally give up my right of legal appeals. i'm not going to sue you so, please, don't not give it a certificate on my account. so they did. it opened in the biggest seven ma in bradford -- cinema in bradford, where they did the book burning. >> yeah. >> anyway, big cinema, this size of auditorium, and nobody went.

[laughter] why in because it's a really crappy movie. [laughter] and whether or not people liked me or not, they didn't want to hand over their money to go and see a really bad film. and i thought it was a great little microcosm of the argument for free speech which is if you had banned that film -- >> yeah. >> -- it would have acquired glamour. it would have acquired the glamour of taboo of a banned object, and people would have been watching videos behind drawn curtains, etc. you put it out there, it disintegrates. >> i suppose the proper parallel would be if you knew that all of the novelists in britain would rise up and riot once this came out, that penn international would order the death sentence to the film maker, one can begin to understand the censor's in keeping this -- >> yeah, you know, the idea of writing novelists -- >> i know. >> is just -- >> i put that to you as kind of a fictional conceit.

>> that's beyond, that stretches the grounds of credulity. >> yeah. >> look, here's the thing, we -- seems to me -- we can't, we should try and not live in a world in which the threat of violence is what determines what we can say and not say. >> yeah. >> you know? otherwise we're giving in to the -- [applause] i mean, i think this is a lesson we learn in the school play grown, you know? -- playground, you know? if you give in to a bully, you insure that there will be more bullying, not that there will be less, that there will be more. and the only way you defuse bullying is by standing up to the bullies. and i think, you know, we know this when we're kids. we should remember it when we're adults. >> having exceeded -- [applause] having strained credulity with my image of writing --

>> i'm still imagining martin amos and me -- >> exactly, you know? in smashing windows. having shown that i'm clearly out of questions, i'm going to turn to the questions that the audience has submitted and put them to you, several of them anyway. why do you feel it's now safe to do this tour? >> well, because i've been doing this kind of thing for 13 years now -- 11 years now, and so far you all seem not that dangerous. [laughter] >> when the moor's last sigh came out -- >> well, yeah, but those days there was still a lot of security around. no, i mean, 2002 really, march 2002 is the last moment at which there actually was a security presence in my life. and since then, you know, i've been on the lecture circuit, i've been teaching, i've been speaking at universities, i've been, you know, going on the jon stewart show. it doesn't seem -- well, that's dangerous. [laughter] no if, i mean, it's -- the thing

to explain to you is that the real danger to not just my life, but to all those who remembered the fatwa also named anybody who was involved in the book at all, so it included publishers, translators, booksellers, etc. the real danger was never from, like, random, violent individuals. the danger was always state-sponsored terrorism. it was the paid professional assassins of the iranian state and can its proxies. that was what the danger was. and that was -- >> and there were some attacks. >> and there were, you know, there were a number of attacks, yes. there were attacks on bookstores, there was bookstores in america like cody's bookstore in berkeley, california, was fire bombed, there was a bookstore in london that was fire boxed twice. there were bookstores all over the world that were attacked.

and not just burned, but people going into stores and threatening people who worked there and in publishing companies and then -- well, the great tragedy was that the book's japanese translator was murdered at his university in the japan. and can there was an attempt to murder the norwegian publisher of the book, and the italian translator of the book who both, fortunately, survived. but this was, you know, this was a shooting war. and the point is that in all these cases the evidence that emerged showed that these were not, these were professional hits. >> this was not spontaneous rage from the locals. >> no, no. these were professional hits. and so, basically, the danger was very high until this moment in, around the turn of the century when, when we finally managed to get the iranians to back down. and at a point at which we were convinced, certain that they

actually had stood down these gangs of killers, really most of the danger went away. >> perhaps you've answered this next question. what is the difference between the fatwa and the recently-announced bounty on you? how do you deal with that? >> well, it's not recently-announced, it's been there all the time. the fact -- >> most recent. >> nobody's ever taken this old gentleman seriously, each in the iran. because it's pretty clear that he doesn't have the money. [laughter] you know, anybody can stand up and say a, you know, $3 million. but if you don't have $3 million, it reduces the force of your argument. [laughter] and, no, this is, you know, what's happened to me in this decade since the string of 2002 -- the spring of 2002 is every so often somebody in iran stands up and sort of waves a fist in my direction and says something rude. >> yeah. >> but it's, as i say, the differences between this form of

rhetoric and the actual very dangerous situation of professional hit squads -- >> yeah and historically in iran the people who were okay with the fatwa -- >> yeah. >> -- include the former reformist president of iran, the man who some people think won the election ask and had it stolen from him most recently by ahmadinejad. >> yes, all of them. that's one of the problems in iran. even the liberals are assholes. [laughter] [applause] >> a novelist imagination, can't indulge in that for my line of work. [laughter] here's a question -- now for something completely different. >> all right. [laughter] >> in your opinion, what would you say is the most crucial element whether literary, structural or moralistic to an engaging children's story? >> oh. i can tell you the answer to that. >> yeah. >> because it's what my -- when i wrote the stories, it's what

my son told me i failed to do. i -- when i'd written about 30 or 40 pages, i thought i better show it to him to make sure it was going all right. so i showed it to him, and he read it, and when i talked to him about it, i could see that there was just some little cloud on his face. and i said, do you like it? and he said, oh, yeah, dad, i liked it, dad. i said, so what are you not saying? and he said, well, dad, some people might be bored. [laughter] and i said -- he said, not me, of course, you know, i'd read it, but, you know -- [laughter] some people. and i was shocked and displeased. [laughter] and i said, bored? why bored? what do you mean, bored? why? and he said this wonderful thing, he said, well, you see,

dad, it doesn't have enough jump. doesn't have enough jump in it. >> jump in it. >> jump. i understood exactly what he meant. i thought, jump. i can do jump. [laughter] give me that back. grabbedded it back from him -- grabbed it back from him, went away and rewrote it with extra jump. >> extra jump. [laughter] >> and then gave it back to him and mouthed through gritted teeth, what do you think of it now? [laughter] and he said, now it's fine. [laughter] and it was the best, most precise literary criticism i ever had. [laughter] because it was actually really helpful. so that's it, the secret ingredient for writing for -- well, this is not exactly children, but young adults, is jump. >> jump. >> if you have jump, the rest of it's okay. ask j.k. rowling, she has jump. [laughter] >> can you tell your favorite

story about, you're the a very good friend of the late christopher hitchens. >> oh, it's kind of -- it's actually very strange for me still to come to -- >> washington. >> -- washington, um, and have him not here. because, you know, every time i would come here, i would stay with him. >> yeah. >> and, you know, it's, it's a big, it's a big hole in the world. um, i mean, i just tell the story about the silly games. we used to play all these game cans. >> right. >> i invented the clean ones, and martin amos invented the dirty ones. [laughter] ..

>> a farewell to weapons. >> mystery zhivago, was it? >> yes. [laughter] >> for whom the bell rings. there are lots of these -- kobe dick. a.k.a. moby wreck. or blueberry fin. anyway, he invented hysterical sex where you replace the word love in the title with the phrase hysterical sex which gives you hysterical sex as the

title of cholera. [laughter] >> all you need is hysterical sex. in many splintered thing. >> does that make it into the book? did you end -- talk about -- about becoming american, settling in this country? was it something you talked about? >> it was a fact. the thing that happened was in 1989 at the time of the fat what we were friendly but not close friends. he lived in d.c. and i lived in london and we saw each other when he could but he was not one of my buddies at that time. when this happened to me, he was

outraged, became a very profound event in his life and he took the decision to stand next to me and be one of my closest friends. he became my friend because of this and of course one of the most wonderful allies anybody could have. christopher is a fight and if you're in a fight you wanted on your side. you certainly don't want him on the other side. it became -- our friendship became closer and closer in those years because he wanted it to be, he wanted to make that statement and i thought that was extraordinary of him. when i came to d c to when it was arranged to have a meeting with clinton, i went to the white house to christopher's

apartment and he had been quite helpful in pressurizing the people he knew in the clinton administration like george stephanopoulos to try to get the meeting to happen. and you know christopher was no great fan of president clinton, hated his guts. but thought that it would be valuable if i could meet him and george stephanopoulos was so excited when the meeting happened that he called christopher from the white house when i was having a meeting and said the eagle has landed. the only time i had anything in common with neil armstrong. it was just like landing on the moon. one small step. it was an important meeting because the previous american administration, george bush senior, had been very dismissive and uninterested in this matter and suddenly to have the

american government putting the power and weight of the united states behind this, it is different from a lot of other governments and secondly it got the attention of the iranians. the combination of that and the initiatives of the new labor government in england, finally brought the thing to an end. >> in fairness we should saying when a reason was given to you for why people did not stand up involved hostages being held. and the archbishop of canterbury -- >> american hostages in lebanon and initially i was asked by the u.s. authority not to visit the united states while there were

hostages in lebanon because there were negotiations to get them out and they didn't want to. to be fair, the day the last american hostage was freed and brought to safety the americans said there was no longer a problem. i could come whenever i wanted. they kept their word. this is the thing about meeting strange people. there is an official. don't know if he does the job now but there is an official probably in washington who is the counterterrorism chief, that is an official which holds the rank of ambassador, the job is so secret that while he is doing the job, you can't say where he lives and can't describe any of his movements and yet he runs the whole counterterrorism operation of the united states and i met three of them, these

invisible men. i could write one hell of a spy novel. it was one of them who asked me not to visit the united states and another of them who said i could come and i was able to come the first time i came here, not here, new york, was to speak at columbia, an anniversary of the bill of rights. this is one of those funny but not funny moments. i was mad at the airport by an 11 vehicle motorcade. at the center of it and armored white stretch limousine. was like having a huge finger in the sky. he is here. and there was a police officer in charge of this operation who i call lt. bob. i said lt. bob, this is a lot.

wouldn't it be better just to put me in a second-hand buick and drive me through the back streets of queens. and he looked at me and said no, sir it would not be better. and i said who else would you do this for, and he said it is what we do for yes arafat. suddenly i was the head of a plo 0. >> like a level of treatment. >> so i said because i was curious, if you were protecting the president what more would you do? and already looks like a colossal event and he said if you were the president these united states, we close the lot of side roads and have men on the buildings there and probably have helicopters.

in your case we didn't do that because it would look too conspicuous. >> good american. one of our guests in the audience asks did you believe at some point, that point would have been in the armored car did you ever believe it was not worth writing "the satanic verses"? >> moralist thought was not worth living. the think about the satanic versus is it is one of the better parts i have written. one of the reasons i thought this fight is so we could reach this moment now when now that the fuss has died down people can finally read it just as a

novel. thinking especially of younger readers. you would have been 5 or 6 or less when this happened and it is ancient history so younger readers can come to the book carrying less baggage. they can just pick up and read it. that is beginning to happen and now i find some people can't stand it and some people think this or that. >> but no longer afraid a man's life was at stake. >> finally having the ordinary life of a book and i am happy for it and the other thing that is important to say is books survive if they survive because people like them. not because people don't like them. the scandal managees. we don't care about the literary scandals of a hundred years ago or 200 years ago. any book that survives any length of time survives because

people think it is valuable. literally any book that stayed in print 100 years stayed in print because people love it. not because people don't like it. and so now finally this book has a chance to see if it is going to pass that test. i won't be around that it has a shot now. i have been around a long time. my story is now more than 30 years old. people still seem to think it is worth reading. there are people who were not born when the book came out to read it now. that is like the first hurdle, going to the next generation. if you could do three or four more of those you have a chance of sticking around. >> i was thinking about this in reading "joseph anton: a memoir" that some point there will be literature professors who will

assign this book and have to explain what surrounded it. this may not be evident right now but here is how this book figured in the history of the world -- >> this other book explains where you are. one of the things i really feel is for a long time i didn't want to talk about all this stuff because if i would write a novel and come on a book tour to talk about my novel inevitably someone would want to ask about that and i would get frustrated because i would think i am here to talk about this novel so for a long, resisted talking about it and now suddenly i am doing nothing but talking about it but i also think it is -- i hope it is a way of drawing a line under it because in the future if i am here to talk about a novel and somebody asks about the fat was i will just throw a 600 page book at them.

go read that. and just feels good to have that out in the open. one of the things that feels good that we were saying before we came out, all these people helped me in the most extraordinary way is, literally moving out of their own homes so that i could live in them because i needed somewhere to live. none of us has ever told the story. it has been two decades, and this is the literary world. this is the world that can't keep the secret to save its life. this is gossip's central. to save my life, everybody is that their lips, didn't say one word. >> extend that still further, when all this was over you concluded one of the reasons your secret was well-kept was the workmen who worked on the

house, people actually knew salman rushdie lived here and didn't talk. everybody -- >> everybody thought this is really serious, don't screw up. everybody focused. it was an extraordinary act. i have often thought more and more that there was this kind of hatred level of me and my work but there was also this extraordinary collective act of solidarity and friendships amounting almost to law. what happened was a battle between love and hate and the reason i am here is because of the power of love which actually proved itself to be stronger than the hatred.

[applause] >> a question which may apply am using the idiom correctly beg the question but the rise of islamic extremism, how can western society maintain a respectful view of the religion? >> i wouldn't recommend it. [applause] [laughter] you want to ask the follow-up? that is the hichens answer. >> make a cartoon in said. since not just millions but hundreds of millions of people believed devoutly in faith which are fundamentally incompatible with one another, could not believe all the revelations that have been received it could be argued that one way we keep the

peace very broadly is to live in separate countries and never migrate from one to another or just not go to certain places. not raise certain topics. not apply the same rigor to someone else's faith that we would to their clothing. >> that is chicken. >> but i am offering it to you just the same. you can also be polite is another word. >> democracy is not a polite thing. had you noticed? one of the things about living in a genuinely open society is people disagree violently all the time. they disagree but the nature of democracy is disagreement and very often that disagreement is extreme and often as we see in this country today is hard to see what common ground there is between people on one side and people on the other. we have a very divided nation. but i have come to believe the

argument itself is freedom. you don't have to resolve the argument, you just have to be able to have it. in every country which is not a free society the argument is shut down. somebody says you can't talk about that or we will tell you how to talk about that and if you don't use the official way of talking about a we will come after you and get you. >> americans may dismiss other countries as undemocratic but it is functioning democracy. there could be limits on some kinds of hate speech. goes far beyond our standard. >> in england where i live the long time there are greater limits like the race relations act which makes it illegal to make racist remarks whereas here the first amendment would

defend, protect the ku klux klan or whatever making its various forms of vile remarks. you can argue both ways. my view i have come to have is the first amendment is a better way to go because bigotry, dreadful ideas do not disappear if you prevent their utterance. those ideas increase in power sometimes if you ban them and for some underground. it is better to have them out in the light of day. vampires die in the sunlight. >> you have to drive a stake through -- >> don't even have to. it is just let the light shine in. >> one of our members of the audience asks in the age of social me and the internet do you think the muslim world is at a crossroads?

how easy is it for anyone to whip them into a frenzy or how different what all this have played out in the age of the internet? >> it would have been much more dangerous. in those days the fastest communication device that existed was the fax machine. if you remember the facts machine. there were telephones that had chords that connected to the wall. that was it. and there's a funny scene in the book where i wasn't allowed to give phone numbers to people. i have this friend of mine in the computer business who said to me one day there are these things now called mobile phones and maybe you could have won and people could call you and they

wouldn't know where you where. how innocent that is. i said that sounds fantastic. he said i am going to look into it. a while later he brought me this object, needed a little bag to carry it. this huge brick but it was like magic. it wasn't connected to anything. people would be fair. you have no idea what it felt like. it felt magical that suddenly i could give out a phone number. everything else, text messaging and twitter and all of that would have been so rapid, the spread of the attack would have been instantaneous. >> what about the fiendish problem of having publishing houses behind the paperback edition, people were afraid of

what happened, someone had come to you and said we had at secret origin on line which goes straight to the kindle edition. >> the invention of digital books would have solved the problem because the reason there was such a fight about the paperback, the reason i was so anxious there should be a paperback is we all knew that if you want to keep a book in print over any length of time you have to have a cheap edition. you can't have the original hardcover edition because no matter how popular the book is there will be a moment at which people stop buying the expensive hardcover edition and fifth you don't have a key addition the book will go out of print and since we were trying to fight for the right of the book to stay in print we needed a chief edition and that was the argument i was using and they were unable to support so we had

to do with another way. now yes, you could have an e-book and it would achieve the same end. >> but he ran up against the arguments -- point is taken, the book is published and this will all go away. the book isn't once again published. >> the argument is backwards. the argument is somehow the book is the problem and if you just forget the book the problem will go way but the book wasn't the problem. the attack on the book was the problem and it is important not to get this upside-down. it is ok for books to be controversial. it is ok for books to be things which many people disagree with. this is the reason when you walk into a bookstore there are a lot of books by different people.

they are not all by me. unfortunately. which i would prefer, but there we are. the point is you can choose to read the books you want to read. and to decide that a book simply by existing, not because you are reading it and or upset by it but it's very existence is such an affront to you that you try to burn the world down, not -- that is the problem, not the boat. [applause] >> since we started late we got a little bit of time. >> you want to go home? >> people said they wanted to go home. i am sorry. >> you can't go home. we will do another ten minutes. >> the national game is over.

>> you want to know the result? not good. >> the question about was a single event that made you come out of hiding for a small event? many small events? >> it was step-by-step. in the end there was a particular important event which was the negotiation between the british government and the iranian government and the united nations security council--not security council -- general assembly in 1998 at which the iranians agreed to withdraw the threats and after that period of a couple years when the british tried to make sure they were telling the truth and had withdrawn but that was the big event but before that it was step-by-step. i was pushing very hard to be allowed to do professional things that riders do such as to be able to talk about my book with my readers and things like

that. a lot of this was a battle with security forces internationally and gradually we got a little more cooperation. the thing that really made a big difference in those years was this country because america allowed me to come here for periods of time which started off being short like a week for ten days and ended up being much longer like two-1/2 months and live here, and ordinary free life. . i was allowed to make my own choices. i was allowed to come here and decide what was ok or not ok and was sent to the land was stupid and went places in new york city or upstate new york or long island or wherever it might be and just live. it gave me breathing room, a way to come out of the bubble and

begin to have an ordinary life with my wife and children and so on. it was incredibly important and the reason when everything finally got better that i made a home in new york city where i now live for almost 30 years, is because this was the place i began to get my freedom back. in the end that made me front of it. >> not only countries that fought would be ill-advised for you to visit and would let you in at various times, airlines. >> there were. for a long time it was difficult to get on a plane at all. again you began to judge countries by the behavior of their national airline. britain did not come out very well, nor did america. not good at all.

canada yes. not good spread into their airline. how we are concerned for you. and actually human beings,

generality of human beings are very nice and people showed a lot of that -- >> a round of applause for humanity. we are a good species. >> most of your very nice. except for you. >> question i should have asked. why did you write "joseph anton: a memoir" in the third person when his life could only be worse? is your story that you write about him. >> i tried writing it in first person and i didn't like it. i started off and just didn't like the tone of it. too much meet me me. shut up. and other reasons. i had this idea of wanting to write it like a novel with the

skill of the novelist except that everything is true. and i felt that if i am describing myself, everybody else is he or she, then it is a different kind of character but if the the character is just one of these other people, then i can write about everybody at the same level if you like and the other thing was i tried to suggest the self that i was writing about is not exactly the same as the self that is writing the book partly because the self that is writing the book has already gone through that experience and come out the other side and hopefully learn something from it and digested it and reflecting an looking backward and is much older. when this whole thing began i

was 41 years old, 1965. i am writing about the choices and decisions of this much younger self. also as the younger self, under colossal and some time deforming pressure and stress. a lot of my friends would say to me when this all ended. when i was in my 50s people would say you look younger than you looked ten years ago. if i look back at photographs i sphinx so too. i see the way that is on that person. i wanted to just say yes, i am writing about myself but it is a slightly different self and so it just became easier for me. there was a particular day when i fought let's just see what happens if i push this into the third person. the moment i did it, it was like a light bulb moment. i can do this. this sino how to do.

>> as a reader i got over it quickly. >> that is what people say. after a few chapters you stop thinking about it. >> when you speak of stress and looking older than ten years later, was it your relationship with your son. and your whole life could be spent for rounded -- >> i don't know how to rank it but all of that, just frustration and claustrophobia and the feeling that this could end badly at any moment, there is a moment, talking about the nature of fear, i am

paraphrasing, it is an absolutist. with fear it is all or nothing. if you give in to fear it is all you can do, be afraid. and i felt that there are certain moments when if you want to do anything at all, including write a book, be a father to your son, do anything, you have to find a way of putting fear to one side. doesn't mean it doesn't exist or you don't need to feel afraid. just in order to have your day you need to put in a quarter of the room. it was interesting to me when talking about the hostages, a lot of them when they came out said something similar about in

order to handle fear you had to put it away as do something else. i felt that the way of surviving this was i had this image i would put it to the little box and put the box in the corner of the room. didn't mean it wasn't fair. i was going to have my day. a mental trick but something i tried to do. i wouldn't recommend it in any event. one of the things i thought, i've finally got a good book out of it. [applause] >> at least that. the thing about this, it is a spy novel, it is a thriller. >> full of wonderful essential

dilemma as. >> i can think as i thought about "the satanic verses," a good story but if possible don't live through this story. if you can avoid your life you should. >> we appreciate the news we can use. as i said at the outset when i interviewed you, you are not the only guest in the hotel, at least one wing of it -- sealed it off and i remember walking on this long corridor with my colleague, recording engineer, police at key points and the room at the end. >> and the entire elite of the american media, charlie rose, mike wallace all arriving blindfolded.

being led by men -- >> as i said, i got to have from my experience from my usual read teen, we spoke about 25 minutes, perhaps ten of that got on the air. by that standard i feel absolutely honored tonight by having this much of your time and being the questionnaire. you have written a terrific book no one could have caught up. i have enjoyed it and thought about you. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] >> booktv is on facebook. like us to interact with guests and viewers. get up-to-date information on events. facebook.com/booktv. >> the year was 1981 or 1982 and i was living in hong kong where i was working for the asian wall street journal. i was the op-ed editor and a submission crossed my desk and it was written by an italian journalist living in what be called pete king. he had secured a very rare visa to pyongyang and had written an article for his publication and send a translation to be hoping the asian wall street journal would publish it.

we did and i was blown away by it. it was completely eye opening, especially his description of public worship of the leader of north korea. it was like reading at chapter from 1984. george orwell's vision had come to life of few years earlier in the democratic's people republic of korea. i couldn't get the closing line of the italian journalist out of my head. it read when i got off the plane, i kissed the ground, happy to be back in a free country, a free country? china in 1981? i knew china wasn't free. was it possible there could be a place, that north korea could be worse? 30 years later we know the

answer to that question. north korea is the world's most repressive state. its people are the slaves of the kim family regime which controls every aspect of their lives, even whether they get to eat. religion is banned. there is no rule of law and political infractions are harsh punishment. punishment i should add that is often needed out to three generations of a person's family. a political of vendor -- offender knows when he goes to prison his parents and his children will probably go with him. there are probably about 200,000 north koreans today in the gulag and more than a million, perhaps as high as two million have already died there. the reason we know all of this and much more is thanks to the testimonies of the north koreans

who have escaped the the the people i write about in my book. this knowledge comes despite the best efforts of the kim family regime to keep it secret. for more than 50 years ever since the end of the korean war, north korea has been sealed off from the world's eyes. the kim family regime has pursued an isolationist policy and maintains an iron grip on information access to which is strictly controlled. to give just one example every radio must be registered with the government and style must be affixed to the government run radio station. to enforce this rule security police the equipped with scanners cruise neighborhoods trying to identify households where residents have tinkered with the radios and tuning in to the radio broadcasts. surveys of north koreans hiding in china show a high percentage

of them listen to foreign radio broadcasts in defiance of the rule and their motivation to leave in part is influenced by what they heard on foreign radio broadcasts. people hungry for information about the outside world. north koreans who escape must first go to china. they can't go south to south korea, strange as it may seem because the demilitarized zone that runs along the 30 eighth parallel is, despite its name, the most interactive border in the world and it is impossible to get across unless you are a soldier who has been shown a safe route and only a few people may get out of north korea by going across the dnc. instead they go to china and in china of the north korean usually finds he has exchanged

one circle of hell for another. china's policy is to track down north koreans in that country, arrest them and send them to north korea where they face imprisonment or worse for the so-called crime of leaving their country. this chinese policy is both immoral and in contravention of china's obligation under international treaties it has signed. some of the north koreans who are hiding in china decided to risk a second escaped out of china, south korea. no one can accomplish this on his own. some people can get out of north korea on their own and rescuers really reach into south korea at its self but if somebody wants to get out of china they need help. distances are too great and challenges too high for a north korean to do on his own.

this is where the new underground railroad comes in. like the original underground railroad in the free civil war american south the new underground railroad is a network of safe houses and secret routes across china. the operators are human traffickers who are in it for the money and christians whose religious beliefs in tell them to help their north korean brothers and sisters. thanks to the underground railroad which has been operating for about 12 years, an increasing number of north koreans are reaching safety in the south and a few other countries. the explosion in the number of north koreans who have gotten out is very striking. they reached south corey and let me share with you a couple of the numbers. in 1990, only nine north koreans were able to reach south korea.

last year 200757 north koreans reach safety in the south. and enough of them, educating us about the truth of life in north korea. and several volumes published about life in north korea and we have a better picture of the truth of the existence. the north korean refugees are performing a second equally important function. i do believe more importantly they are helping to open their own information starved homeland just as the world knows more about north korea, north koreans know more about the world. this too is thanks to the efforts of north koreans who have escaped. how do they do that?

any immigrant who goes to a new country what is the first thing he wants to do? to let his family back home know that he is okay and tell them about his new life but for a north korean who wants to do that it is next to impossible. you can't make a phone call in north korea or send an e-mail or text message or facebook and can't even mail a letter so the exiles have created a black market in information. they hire chinese careers to cross the border and deliver a messages or sometimes delivered chinese cellphones to a north korean relative to tell the relative to go to an area near the border on a certain day at a certain hour, turn on the phone and receive a phone call from the relative who has escaped to a different country. in s