A writer is stalked by his former M.F.A. student:
“Soon after that first volley, Janice (my agent) called, sounding upset. For several days, she had been receiving strange e-mails about me from Nasreen, and she was concerned for her safety. The e-mails contained the same baseless accusations of plagiarism, accompanied by threats of ‘hell to pay’ if Janice and I connived to ‘steal’ any more of Nasreen’s work. Later that day, Nasreen began threatening Paula, the editor to whom Janice had introduced Nasreen.
“‘You all play a part in unleashing the fury,’ Nasreen wrote. Soon after, with this ‘fury’ now apparently reaching for terms strong enough to account for its own escalating intensity, Nasreen brought on one of those words that scorch everything they come near. The word was ‘rape,’ and even though she used it figuratively rather than literally, I felt immediately the potency of its touch, as if I’d been splashed with acid: ‘I say if I can’t write my book and get emotionally and verbally raped by James Lasdun, a Jew disguising himself as an English-American, well then, the Holocaust Industry Books should all be banned as should the films.’”
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