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
The Rushdie Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West analysis of the issues raised". Other positive reviews appeared in the Library Journal, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. the LA Times, For François Dupuis-Déri (Columbia University), Pipes book can be understood in the neoconservative idea of the "Clash of Civilizations". According to Emilie Réné, in "Les Cahiers du CERI" (CERI is a French public institution in political science), Pipes' essay "suffers from oversimplification". The Rushdie Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West The Rushdie Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West is a book written by historian Daniel Pipes, published in 1990. It focuses on events surrounding "The Satanic