The Rushdie Letters: Freedom to Speak, Freedom to Write.

• Author: Kellman, Steven G.

On Feb. 14, 1989, British author Salman Rushdie received a gruesome Valentine. Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini broadcast a deadly fatwa over Teheran radio: "I inform the proud Muslim people of the world that the author of The Satanic Verses book which is against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran, and all involved in its publication who were aware of its contents, are sentenced to death." Khomeini promised that anyone who died in the effort to rid the world of Rushdie would "be regarded as a martyr and go directly to heaven."

Four years later, the novelist's predicament is more perilous than ever. The original fatwa has been reaffirmed by Khomeini's successors, and the bounty originally pledged to Rushdie's assassin has multiplied to more than $3,000,000. During the four years in which its hunted author has been forced into hiding, thousands have vented their rage over the alleged blasphemies of The Satanic Verses. Bookstores have been torched and bombed, and some of the novel's defenders, including its Japanese translator, have been murdered. The Italian translator has been injured severely. Rushdie still lives, but, despite occasional, brief public appearances, must do so in peripatetic seclusion, under armed guard.

To remind the world of the continuing ordeal of a man who remains hostage to artistic intolerance, the International Committee for the Defense of Salman Rushdie invited 26 authors to compose concise messages to him. The Rushdie Letters collects their statements, along with Rushdie's response and a detailed chronology of the entire sordid affair. Contributors, predominantly European and North American, include many of the most prominent figures in contemporary literature--Margaret Atwood, Nadine Gordimer, Gunter Grass, Mario Vargas Llosa, Norman Mailer, Tom Stoppard, William Styron, Paul Theroux, and A.B. Yehoshua.

Though Rushdie has expressed his sorrow that some have been offended by The Satanic Verses and has attempted, unsuccessfully, a reconciliation with Muslim leaders, he insists: "I have never disowned my book, nor regretted writing it." Instead of repudiating Islam as...