President Obama, with daughters Malia and Sasha, shop at a local bookstore on Saturday in Washington. (Agence France Presse)
US President Barack Obama's purchase of author Salman Rushdie's latest volume caused a stir on Twitter today as the author asked if there was a reason for Mr Obama choosing a volume "not related" to Ayatollah Khomeini.
Mr Obama had made a visit to a local bookstore with daughters Sasha and Malia to buy nine books, one of which was Mr Rushdie's "Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights," published in September.
As the media reported the event and a section of fans interpreted it as a show of the US President's support to Mr Rushdie over the Iranian leader's fatwa on him, the author tweeted:
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights" -- a modern version of the Tales of a 1001 nights -- is a medley of stories and characters like the original version. A fantasy, it deals with the choices people have to make and their consequences.
The volume is very different from the Satanic Verses by the same author, which had earned him death threats from Muslim hardliners.
Replies poured in, with many saying buying a book does not have to be a political statement, even for the President of the United States.
Earlier today,
Mr Rushdie took a dig at former Finance Minister P Chidambaram, who had termed the ban on "Satanic Verses" as "wrong". The author tweeted to say, "This admission just took 27 years. How many more before the "mistake" is corrected?"
Mr Chidambaram was Minister of State Home Affairs when the ban was imposed in October 1988. But on Saturday, the former minister said at the Times LitFest that he had "no hesitation in saying that the ban on Salman Rushdie's book was wrong".
After the "Satanic Verses" in 1988, Iran's religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini declared a fatwa on Mr Rushdie, calling for his death, forcing the author to go into exile.