Salman Rushdie to write his memoirs for 2012 publication

"I have waited a long time to write this memoir, until I felt I was ready to do it. I'm ready now," the 63-year-old award-winning author said in a statement.

Rushdie, who lives mostly in London, but also in New York, won the prestigious Booker Prize for his novel "Midnight's Children" in 1981.

But the publication of his novel "The Satanic Verses" in 1988 sparked a furious reaction from the former Ayatollah Khomenei in Iran, resulting in a fatwa - or Islamic religious ruling - which sent Rushdie into hiding for some 10 years.

"I'm absolutely delighted that Random House, my long-time publisher, has agreed to publish my memoir in the English-language world, as well as in Spanish, and for the first time in German," Rushdie said.

"I couldn't wish for a better home for my work," he added. The manuscript is expected to be completed by the end of next year.

Random House described the deal as "one of the most far-reaching multi-national and multi-language book publishing deals by one publisher for a single title."

The memoir would tackle Rushdie's marriages, his experience as an "outsider" at a leading public school in England and his years of "internal exile," a spokesman said.
Rushdie was born in Mumbai, India, in 1947, the son of a Cambridge-educated lawyer and a teacher. He went to Rugby School in England and studied history at Cambridge University.

In Britain, where the book is to be published by Jonathan Cape, spokesman Dan Franklin said the Rushdie memoirs would be a "cultural event like no other, as important politically as it will be to the history of literature."

Rushdie, who has been married four times, is currently working on a film version of Midnight's Children. His latest book, Luka and the Fire of Life, has recently been published.