The writer of numerous acclaimed novels, like The Satanic Verses and the Booker Prize-winning Midnight's Children, Rushdie is as well known for his brilliant fiction as he is for his historical role as the man whose words created a violent backlash in the fundamentalist Islam world. In 1989, when Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini declared a fatwa, or death sentence, against Rushdie for his criticism of Islam in The Satanic Verses--offering a $3 million bounty for his life--real life and fiction became tragically intertwined. It's this real-life impact of his fiction--the "bad novel" he lives in--that makes him uniquely qualified to speak about fear, truth, religion, and fiction.