LONDON, FEB 20: Booker-prize winning author Salman Rushdie, who was putunder a death sentence for enraging Muslims with his book The SatanicVerses, is planning to leave Britain and live permanently in the UnitedStates, a newspaper report said on Sunday.Fifty-three year old Rushdie is buying an apartment in New York, the SundayTimes said quoting his friends, who said he is planning to make America hispermanent home. "Rushdie has become increasingly disillusioned with Britainand feels very much at home with that Vanity Fair and New Yorker crowd," thepaper quoted a friend of Rushdie's as saying. Recently Rushdie has been seenwith an Indian-born actress based in Los Angeles. Rushide, who has been inCalifornia for the past nine days, met his new companion last September at alunch party for Talk magazine.It is in doubt whether Rushdie's wife Elizabeth will join him in America,the paper said quoting Rushdie's friends. Earlier this month Rushdie, whowon the Booker Prize for his novel Midnight's Children, described Elizabethas the "most important person in my life," saying "she saved my life. In atime of bad luck, she was my good luck." The two of them worked together ona book about Indian writers, which was published five years ago.Rushdie has lived in about 30 different safe houses since a fatwa condemninghim to death was imposed on him for blasphemy by an order of AyatollahKhomeini of Iran in 1989. One consequence of the reported move to Americawould be the end of an annual one-million-pound expenditure borne by Britishtaxpayers on Rushdie's protection, the Sunday Times said on Sunday.Since the fatwa was lifted in 1998, his public appearances have increased.However, in December 500 Iranians each vowed to sell a kidney to raise moneyto have him killed. Not long after Rushdie first went into hiding, hismarriage to a fellow novelist, the American-born Marianne Wiggins,collapsed. She was angry at what she saw as his selfishness after a remarkhe made that he would do anything to save his life. Rushdie was born inIndia but educated at Rugby school. Rushdie's agent, Andrew Wylie, who wonhim a multi-million pound five book deal, also lives in New York.
