New York, Feb. 16 : British novelist Ian McEwan has revealed that he gave Indian-born Salman Rushdie shelter in his Cotswold cottage after Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against the latter twenty years ago.

McEwan reveals that Rushdie and he hid away shortly after the fatwa was issued on February 16, 2009 14, 1989.

This intimate detail is contained in a long profile of McEwan published in next week''s issue of the New Yorker, The Guardian reports.

Written by an editor at the magazine, Daniel Zalewski, the profile explores McEwan''s growing commitment to science and rationality as a factor, alongside the Rushdie affair, behind the controversy over Islamic fundamentalism in which he later became embroiled.