Salmon Rushdie to head literary group

NEW YORK, March 10 (UPI) -- Salmon Rushdie, who survived an Iranian death fatwah for allegedly blaspheming the Prophet Mohammed in a novel, has been picked to head the PEN American Center.

The 56-year-old Indian-born writer, who now lives in New York, succeeds Joel Connaroe, former president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, in the post at PEN, which represents writers' rights and interests around the world.

Rushdie is the author of eight novels including his internationally acclaimed "Midnight's Children," five works of non-fiction, and several collections of short stories.

The fatwah was imposed by Muslim fundamentalist cleric Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 after pronouncing Rushdie's novel, "Satanic Verses," blasphemous. The death order was lifted by the current more liberal Iranian regime, but for a decade it forced the author to go underground in England, where he was living at the time.