Middle East protests: Satanic Verses author Sir Salman Rushdie speaks out The anti-American protests sweeping the Middle East over the release of anti-Islam film have brought back vivid memories for Sir Salman Rushdie. The Booker Prize-winning author was forced to go into hiding after Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for his death in 1989 following the publication of his book The Satanic Verses. "I always said that what happened to me was a prologue and there will be many, many more episodes like it," he tells Mandrake at the launch of his memoir, Joseph Anton, at The Collection in South Kensington. This is one of those. Rushdie does not defend the film at the centre of the new outcry, which was produced by a Coptic Christain Egyptian based in America. "The correct response would be to say it is garbage and unimportant," he tells me. Clearly, it's a piece of crap, is very poorly done and is malevolent. To react to it with this kind of violence is just ludicrously inappropriate. People are being attacked who had nothing to do with it and that is not right.