 Chatwin died at a hospital in Nice on 18 January 1989 . A memorial service was held in the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Sophia in West London on 14 February 1989 , the same day that a fatwa was announced on Salman Rushdie , a close friend of Chatwin 's , who attended the service . Paul Theroux , who also attended the service , later commented on it and Chatwin in a piece for Granta . The novelist Martin Amis described the memorial service in the essay " Salman Rushdie " , included in his anthology Visiting Mrs Nabokov . 
