For nearly a decade, Salman Rushdie lived in fear of assassins, fanatics and bounty hunters pursuing him at the behest of a foreign potentate enraged by a book he had written. The Satanic Verses was a serious novel, and the Iranian ayatollah’s fatwa was serious, too: the book’s Japanese translator was murdered, its Italian translator stabbed and its Norwegian publisher shot.

British author Salman Rushdie in Paris in November 2012. Pic/AFP Photo/Kenzo Tribouillardu00a0