The Razor's Edge

Salman Rushdie's Knife is an eloquent, first-person account of the horrific attack on him. It's also a love story

- Stephen Alter

Being a novelist has never been a particularly dangerous occupation, especially compared to serving on a bomb squad, test piloting fighter jets or climbing mountains in the Himalaya. Nevertheless, it does entail certain risks, especially when religious fanatics decide that your stories are heretical and blasphemous. As most readers know, Salman Rushdie has spent more than three decades living under the shadow of a fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini on account of his novel, The Satanic Verses. For the first ten years after that death threat was issued, Rushdie had to go into hiding, protected by British police.