Salman Rushdie's Joseph Anton: Words of Wounded Self

The article proposes how Salman Rushdie presented himself as victim of Fatwa in Joseph Anton: A Memoir (2012). It’s one thing is to hear Rushdie telling about those events, incidents, accidents and reminiscences which affected his life career and; it’s another thing to hear his demonstration, inception and conceptualisation of the power of art, literature and artist. In representing these two ideas he seems anti-fundamentalist, anti-terrorist, anti-fatwaist, and a one-man army standing against all institutions of anti-secularism and humanism. This article also focuses on how Rushdie’s present memoir is different, in plot, situation description and artifact of developing character through dialogue, from memoir or autobiographies of Augustine, Rousseau and others written in the present century. While studying, I used ‘autoboir’, a coinage referring to postmodern writing representing/reflecting amalgamation of all that affects a life and author’s intention to include autobiography and memoir into a single genre. The paper also proposes Rushdie’s thought on what literature is and what it can be.