JOSEPH ANTON A Memoir

On Valentine’s Day, 1989, Rushdie’s world turned upside down when he learned that the Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s religious leader, had placed a fatwa, or death sentence, on his head for writing the novel THE SATANIC VERSES. Forced to live underground, he adopted a name based on his favorite writers: Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov. This is his story. Narrator Sam Dastor starts out by reading in a low, scratchy, morose English–accented voice that overcompensates for the seriousness of Rushdie’s harrowing tale. As the book progresses, Dastor loses the scratchiness; his voice becomes more robust and confident, and he adopts a more defiant tone. This is where the book’s pace quickens, and we get the full sense of how the author literally survived his ordeal. Dastor would have been better off using it for the whole book. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine [Published: NOVEMBER 2012]