Susan Sontag PEN writers' organization. After Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a "fatwa" death sentence against writer Salman Rushdie for blasphemy after the publication of his novel "The Satanic Verses" that year, Sontag's uncompromising support of Rushdie was crucial in rallying American writers to his cause. A few years later, during the Siege of Sarajevo, Sontag gained attention for directing a production of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" in a candlelit theatre in the Bosnian city. In the "Daily Telegraph", Kevin Myers called it "mesmerisingly precious and hideously self-indulgent." and wrote, "By my personal reckoning, the performance lasted as long as the
Deborah Rogers At the end of her life, Rogers was the chairman of Rogers, Coleridge and White. Among the authors Rogers represented were A. S. Byatt, Ian McEwan and Peter Carey. Earlier in her career she had represented Angela Carter, and (before he joined Andrew Wylie's agency) Salman Rushdie. Shortly after the professional breach, Rogers offered Rushdie her second home as a refuge from the fatwā (death sentence) imposed by Ayatollah Khomeini in February 1989. The remote farm in Powys was used by Rushdie during his decade in hiding. Rogers was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award in International Publishing at the