Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie ( ; born 19 June 1947) is an Indian-born British and American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with

historical fiction Historical fiction is a literary genre in which a fictional plot takes place in the Setting (narrative), setting of particular real past events, historical events. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literatur ...

and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, typically set on the

Indian subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a physiographic region of Asia below the Himalayas which projects into the Indian Ocean between the Bay of Bengal to the east and the Arabian Sea to the west. It is now divided between Bangladesh, India, and Pakista ...

. Rushdie's second novel, ''

Midnight's Children ''Midnight's Children'' is the second novel by Indian-British writer Salman Rushdie, published by Jonathan Cape with cover design by Bill Botten, about India's transition from British colonial rule to independence and partition. It is a pos ...

'' (1981), won the

Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a prestigious literary award conferred each year for the best single work of sustained fiction written in the English language, wh ...

in 1981 and was deemed to be "the best novel of all winners" on two occasions, marking the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize. After his fourth novel, '' The Satanic Verses'' (1988), Rushdie became the subject of several assassination attempts and death threats because of what was seen by some to be an irreverent depiction of Muhammad. This included a ''

fatwa A fatwa (; ; ; ) is a legal ruling on a point of Islamic law (sharia) given by a qualified Islamic jurist ('' faqih'') in response to a question posed by a private individual, judge or government. A jurist issuing fatwas is called a ''mufti'', ...

'' calling for his death issued by

Ruhollah Khomeini Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini (17 May 1900 or 24 September 19023 June 1989) was an Iranian revolutionary, politician, political theorist, and religious leader. He was the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the main leader of the Iranian ...

, the

supreme leader of Iran The supreme leader of Iran, also referred to as the supreme leader of the Islamic Revolution, but officially called the supreme leadership authority, is the head of state and the highest political and religious authority of Iran (above the Presi ...

. The book was banned in 20 countries. Numerous killings and bombings have been carried out by extremists who cite the book as motivation, sparking a debate about censorship and religiously motivated violence. In 2022, Rushdie survived a stabbing at the Chautauqua Institution in

Chautauqua, New York Chautauqua ( ) is a Administrative divisions of New York#Town, town and lake resort community in Chautauqua County, New York, Chautauqua County, New York (state), New York. The population was 4,009 at the 2020 census. The town is named after Cha ...

, that led to loss of his right eye and damage to his liver and hands. In 1983, Rushdie was elected a fellow of the

Royal Society of Literature The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820 by King George IV to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, the RSL has about 800 Fellows, elect ...

. He was appointed a of France in 1999. Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for his services to literature. In 2008, ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

'' ranked him 13th on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Since 2000, Rushdie has lived in the United States. He was named Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

in 2015. Earlier, he taught at

Emory University Emory University is a private university, private research university in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It was founded in 1836 as Emory College by the Methodist Episcopal Church and named in honor of Methodist bishop John Emory. Its main campu ...

. He was elected to the

American Academy of Arts and Letters The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, Music of the United States, music, and Visual art of the United States, art. Its fixed number ...

. In 2012, he published '' Joseph Anton: A Memoir'', an account of his life in the wake of the events following ''The Satanic Verses''. Rushdie was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by ''

Time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...

'' magazine in April 2023. Rushdie's personal life, including his five marriages and four divorces, has attracted media attention, particularly during his marriage to television personality and activist

Padma Lakshmi Padma Parvati Lakshmi (; née Vaidynathan; born September 1, 1970) is an American television host, model, author, businesswoman, and activist. She rose to prominence by hosting the Bravo cooking competition program '' Top Chef'' (2006–2023). ...

Early life and education

Rushdie was born in

Bombay Mumbai ( ; ), also known as Bombay ( ; its official name until 1995), is the capital city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Maharashtra. Mumbai is the financial centre, financial capital and the list of cities i ...

on 19 June 1947 in

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance in South Asia. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one form or another ...

, into a Kashmiri Muslim family.''Literary Encyclopedia'': "Salman Rushdie"
. Retrieved 20 January 2008 He is the son of Anis Ahmed Rushdie, a

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

-educated lawyer-turned-businessman, and Negin Bhatt, a teacher. Rushdie's father was dismissed from the Indian Civil Services (ICS) after it emerged that the birth certificate submitted by him had changes to make him appear younger than he was. Rushdie has three sisters. He wrote in his memoir, '' Joseph Anton,'' that his father adopted the name Rushdie in honour of

Averroes Ibn Rushd (14 April 112611 December 1198), archaically Latinization of names, Latinized as Averroes, was an Arab Muslim polymath and Faqīh, jurist from Al-Andalus who wrote about many subjects, including philosophy, theology, medicine, astron ...

(Ibn Rushd). He recalls his "first literary influence": "When I first saw '' The Wizard of Oz'' it made a writer of me." He recalls "Every child in India in my day (and probably still) was obsessed with

P. G. Wodehouse Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse ( ; 15 October 1881 – 14 February 1975) was an English writer and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. His creations include the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet, Je ...

and

Agatha Christie Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, (; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English people, English author known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving ...

. I read mountains of books by both." He also recalls that "Alice captured my imagination as few other books did: both the books, not just ''

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (also known as ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English Children's literature, children's novel by Lewis Carroll, a mathematics university don, don at the University of Oxford. It details the story of a ...

'' but ''

Through the Looking-Glass ''Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There'' is a novel published in December 1871 by Lewis Carroll, the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a mathematics lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford, Christ Church, University of Oxford. I ...

'' as well, and I can still recite the whole of "

Jabberwocky "Jabberwocky" is a Nonsense verse, nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll about the killing of a creature named "the Jabberwock". It was included in his 1871 novel ''Through the Looking-Glass'', the sequel to ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' ...

" and " The Walrus and the Carpenter" from memory. I also loved the '' Swallows and Amazons'' series by Arthur Ransome because of the unimaginable freedom those young people sailing in the Lake District were given by their families ... When I was 16, I read ''

The Lord Of The Rings ''The Lord of the Rings'' is an Epic (genre), epic high fantasy novel written by English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's book ''The Hobbit'' but eventually d ...

'' and became obsessed, and can still recite the inscription on the Ruling Ring ('One ring to rule them all...') in the dark language of Mordor. I read an astonishing amount of Golden Age science fiction, not just

Ray Bradbury Ray Douglas Bradbury ( ; August 22, 1920June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, Horror fiction, horr ...

, Arthur C. Clarke and

Kurt Vonnegut Kurt Vonnegut ( ; November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American author known for his Satire, satirical and darkly humorous novels. His published work includes fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfict ...

but more arcane writers like Clifford D. Simak,

James Blish James Benjamin “Jimmy” Blish () was an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He is best known for his ''Cities in Flight'' novels and his series of ''Star Trek'' novelizations written with his wife, J. A. Lawrence. His novel ''A Case ...

, Zenna Henderson and

L. Sprague de Camp Lyon Sprague de Camp (; November 27, 1907 – November 6, 2000) was an American author of science fiction, Fantasy literature, fantasy and non-fiction literature. In a career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, both novels and works of ...

." He has written about his family following the Indian custom of kissing holy books if they were dropped on the floor. "But we kissed everything. We kissed dictionaries and atlases. We kissed

Enid Blyton Enid Mary Blyton (11 August 1897 – 28 November 1968) was an English children's writer, whose books have been worldwide bestsellers since the 1930s, selling more than 600 million copies. Her books are still enormously popular and have been tra ...

novels and ''

Superman Superman is a superhero created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, which first appeared in the comic book ''Action Comics'' Action Comics 1, #1, published in the United States on April 18, 1938.The copyright date of ''Action Comics ...

'' comics. If I'd ever dropped the telephone directory I'd probably have kissed that, too." Rushdie grew up in Bombay and was educated at the

Cathedral and John Connon School The Cathedral and John Connon School is a co-educational private school founded in 1860 and located in Fort, Mumbai, Maharashtra.Fort (Mumbai precinct), Fort in South Bombay, before moving to

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

in 1964 to attend

Rugby School Rugby School is a Public school (United Kingdom), private boarding school for pupils aged 13–18, located in the town of Rugby, Warwickshire in England. Founded in 1567 as a free grammar school for local boys, it is one of the oldest independ ...

Rugby, Warwickshire Rugby is a market town in eastern Warwickshire, England, close to the River Avon, Warwickshire, River Avon. At the 2021 United Kingdom census, 2021 census, its population was 78,117, making it the List of Warwickshire towns by population, secon ...

. He then attended the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

as an undergraduate student at

King's College, Cambridge King's College, formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, is a List of colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college lies beside the River Cam and faces ...

, from where he graduated with a

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

degree in

History History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the Human history, human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some t ...

Career

Copywriter

Rushdie worked as a

copywriter Copywriting is the act or occupation of writing text for the purpose of advertising or other forms of marketing. Copywriting is aimed at selling products or services. The product, called copy or sales copy, is written content that aims to incre ...

for the advertising agency

Ogilvy & Mather Ogilvy is a New York City-based British advertising, marketing, and public relations agency. It was founded in 1850 by Edmund Mather as a London-based agency. In 1964, the firm became known as Ogilvy & Mather after merging with a New York City a ...

, where he came up with "irresistibubble" for

Aero Aero is a Greek prefix relating to flight and air. In British English, it is used as an adjective related to flight (e.g., as a shortened substitute for aeroplane). Aero, Ærø, or Aeros may refer to: Aeronautics Airlines and companies * Aero (A ...

and "Naughty but Nice" for cream cakes, and for the agency Ayer Barker (until 1982), for whom he wrote the line "That'll do nicely" for

American Express American Express Company or Amex is an American bank holding company and multinational financial services corporation that specializes in payment card industry, payment cards. It is headquartered at 200 Vesey Street, also known as American Expr ...

.Ravikrishnan, Ashutosh
Salman Rushdie's Midnight Child
. South Asian Diaspora. 25 July 2012. Collaborating with musician Ronnie Bond, Rushdie wrote the words for an advertising record on behalf of the now defunct Burnley Building Society that was recorded at Good Earth Studios, London. The song was called "The Best Dreams" and was sung by George Chandler. It was while at Ogilvy that Rushdie wrote ''Midnight's Children'', before becoming a full-time writer. Rushdie was a personal friend of

Angela Carter Angela Olive Pearce (formerly Carter, Stalker; 7 May 1940 – 16 February 1992), who published under the name Angela Carter, was an English novelist, short story writer, poet, and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picar ...

's, calling her "the first great writer I ever met".

Literary works

Rushdie’s works are often categorized as

postmodern Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting the wo ...

, particularly within the tradition of Magic Realism. However, they also reveal early signs of a literary and cultural shift beyond postmodernism. In our contemporary world – saturated with reality TV, talk shows and other forms of pure entertainment – apathy, passivity and inaction have become defining features. Jeffrey T. Nealon identifies this prevailing sense of disengagement as a hallmark of the post-postmodern condition, which is sometimes referred to as metamodernism: “we post-postmodern capitalists are trained by our media masters to watch rather than act, consume rather than do.” The overt political tensions of the Cold War era have been replaced by a more insidious, media-driven culture of distraction and spectacle. In response, Rushdie's works blend fantasy with realism to jolt readers out of this stupor, challenging delusions and encouraging renewed critical awareness.

Early works and literary breakthrough, 1975–1987

Rushdie's debut, the science fiction tale '' Grimus'' (1975), was generally ignored by the public and literary critics. His next novel, ''

'' (1981), put him on the map. It follows the life of Saleem Sinai, born at the stroke of midnight as India gained its independence, who is endowed with special powers and a connection to other children born at the birth of the modern nation of India. Sinai has been compared to Rushdie. However, Rushdie refuted the idea of having written any of his characters as autobiographical, stating, "People assume that because certain things in the character are drawn from your own experience, it just becomes you. In that sense, I've never felt that I've written an autobiographical character." Rushdie writes of his "debt to the oral narrative traditions of India and also to the great novelists

Jane Austen Jane Austen ( ; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for #List of works, her six novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment on the English landed gentry at the end of the 18th century ...

and

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and Social criticism, social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by ...

—Austen for her portraits of brilliant women caged by the social convention of their time, women whose Indian counterparts I knew well; Dickens for his great, rotting, Bombay-like city, and his ability to root his larger-than-life characters and surrealist imagery in a sharply observed, almost hyperrealistic background." Shortly after its publication, V. S. Pritchett wrote: "In Salman Rushdie, the author of ''Midnight's Children'', India has produced a glittering novelist—one with startling imaginative and intellectual resources, a master of perpetual storytelling. Like García Marquez in ''

One Hundred Years of Solitude ''One Hundred Years of Solitude'' (, ) is a 1967 in literature, 1967 novel by Colombian people, Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez that tells the Family saga, multi-generational story of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio ...

'', he weaves a whole people's capacity for carrying its inherited myths—and new ones that it goes on generating—into a kind of magic carpet. The human swarm swarms in every man and woman as they make their bid for life and vanish into the passion or hallucination that hangs about them like the smell of India itself. Yet at the same time there are strange Western echoes, of the irony of Sterne in ''

Tristram Shandy Tristram may refer to: Literature * the title character of ''The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'', a novel by Laurence Sterne * the title character of '' Tristram of Lyonesse'', an epic poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne *"Tristr ...

''—that early nonlinear writer—in Rushdie's readiness to tease by breaking off or digressing at the gravest moments. This is very odd in an Indian novel! The book is really about the mystery of being born and the puzzle of who one is." ''Midnight's Children'' won the 1981

and, in 1993 and 2008, the Best of the Bookers and Booker of Bookers special prizes. After ''Midnight's Children'', Rushdie depicted the political turmoil in

Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...

with ''

Shame Shame is an unpleasant self-conscious emotion often associated with negative self-evaluation; motivation to quit; and feelings of pain, exposure, distrust, powerlessness, and worthlessness. Definition Shame is a discrete, basic emotion, d ...

'' (1983), basing his characters on

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (5 January 1928 – 4 April 1979) was a Pakistani barrister and politician who served as the fourth president of Pakistan from 1971 to 1973 and later as the ninth Prime Minister of Pakistan, prime minister of Pakistan from 19 ...

and General

Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (12 August 192417 August 1988) was a Pakistani military officer and statesman who served as the sixth president of Pakistan from 1978 until Death of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, his death in an airplane crash in 1988. He also se ...

. ''Shame'' won France's '' Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger'' (Best Foreign Book) and was a close runner-up for the Booker Prize. Both these works of

postcolonial literature Postcolonial literature is the literature by people from formerly colonized countries, originating from all continents except Antarctica. Postcolonial literature often addresses the problems and consequences of the colonization and subsequent deco ...

are characterised by a style of magic realism and the immigrant outlook that Rushdie is very conscious of as a member of the

Kashmiri diaspora The Kashmiri diaspora refers to Kashmiris who have migrated out of the larger Kashmir region into other areas and countries, and their descendants. India Punjab Estimated, 1,000-1,200 Kashmiri Hindus live in Pathankot, Gurdaspur and the Ci ...

. Rushdie wrote a non-fiction book about

Nicaragua Nicaragua, officially the Republic of Nicaragua, is the geographically largest Sovereign state, country in Central America, comprising . With a population of 7,142,529 as of 2024, it is the third-most populous country in Central America aft ...

in 1987 called '' The Jaguar Smile''. This book has a political focus and is based on his first-hand experiences and research at the scene of

Sandinista The Sandinista National Liberation Front (, FSLN) is a socialist political party in Nicaragua. Its members are called Sandinistas () in both English and Spanish. The party is named after Augusto César Sandino, who led the Nicaraguan resistan ...

political experiments. He became interested in Nicaragua after he had been a neighbour of Madame Somoza, wife of the former Nicaraguan dictator, and his son Zafar was born around the time of the Nicaraguan revolution.

''The Satanic Verses'' and ''Haroun and the Sea of Stories'', 1988–1990

His most controversial work, '' The Satanic Verses'', was published in 1988 and won the Whitbread Award. It was followed by '' Haroun and the Sea of Stories'' (1990). Written in the shadow of the fatwa, it is about the magic of story-telling and an allegorical defence of the power of stories over silence.

Further works, 1990s–2000s

In 1990, Rushdie reviewed

Thomas Pynchon Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. ( , ; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, Literary genre, genres and Theme (narrative), th ...

's '' Vineland'' in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', and offered some droll musings on the author's reclusiveness: "So he wants a private life and no photographs and nobody to know his home address. I can dig it, I can relate to that (but, like, he should try it when it's compulsory instead of a free-choice option)." Rushdie recalls: "I was able to meet the famously invisible man. I had dinner with him at

Sonny Mehta Ajai Singh "Sonny" Mehta (9 November 1942McFadden, Robert D. (31 December 2019) ''The New York Times''. – 30 December 2019) was a British and American editor. Mehta was the editor-in-chief of Alfred A. Knopf and chairman of the Knopf Doubleday ...

's apartment in

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

and found him very satisfyingly Pynchonesque. At the end of dinner I thought, well, now we're friends, and maybe we'll see each other from time to time. He never called again." Rushdie has published many short stories, including those collected in '' East, West'' (1994). His 1995 novel '' The Moor's Last Sigh'', a family saga spanning some 100 years of India's history, won the Whitbread Award. '' The Ground Beneath Her Feet'' (1999) is a riff on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, casting

Orpheus In Greek mythology, Orpheus (; , classical pronunciation: ) was a Thracians, Thracian bard, legendary musician and prophet. He was also a renowned Ancient Greek poetry, poet and, according to legend, travelled with Jason and the Argonauts in se ...

and

Eurydice Eurydice (; Ancient Greek: Εὐρυδίκη 'wide justice', classical pronunciation: ) was a character in Greek mythology and the wife of Orpheus, whom Orpheus tried to bring back from the dead with his enchanting music. Etymology Several ...

as rock stars. The book features many original song lyrics; one was the basis for the U2 song " The Ground Beneath Her Feet". Rushdie is credited as the lyricist. Salman-Rushdie-1

Following '' Fury'' (2001), set mainly in New York and avoiding the previous sprawling narrative style that spans generations, periods and places, Rushdie's novel '' Shalimar the Clown'' (2005), a story about love and betrayal set in

Kashmir Kashmir ( or ) is the Northwestern Indian subcontinent, northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term ''Kashmir'' denoted only the Kashmir Valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir P ...

and

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

, was hailed as a return to form by a number of critics. In his 2002 non-fiction collection ''Step Across This Line'', he professes his admiration for

Italo Calvino Italo Calvino (, ; ;. RAI (circa 1970), retrieved 25 October 2012. 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian novelist and short story writer. His best-known works include the ''Our Ancestors'' trilogy (1952–1959), the '' Cosm ...

and Pynchon, among others. His early influences included

Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo ( ; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish literature, Spanish-language and international literatur ...

Mikhail Bulgakov Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov ( ; rus, links=no, Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков, p=mʲɪxɐˈil ɐfɐˈnasʲjɪvʲɪdʑ bʊlˈɡakəf; – 10 March 1940) was a Russian and Soviet novelist and playwright. His novel ''The M ...

Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet, mathematician, photographer and reluctant Anglicanism, Anglican deacon. His most notable works are ''Alice ...

and

Günter Grass Günter Wilhelm Grass (; 16 October 1927 – 13 April 2015) was a German novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor, and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature. He was born in the Free City of Danzig (now Gda ...

. When asked who his favorite novelist is, he says: "There are days when it's Kafka, in whose world we all live; others when it's

Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the great ...

, for the sheer fecundity of his imagination and the beauty of his prose. But it's probably Joyce on more days than anyone else." 2008 saw the publication of '' The Enchantress of Florence'', one of Rushdie's most challenging works that focuses on the past. It tells the story of a European's visit to

Akbar Akbar (Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar, – ), popularly known as Akbar the Great, was the third Mughal emperor, who reigned from 1556 to 1605. Akbar succeeded his father, Humayun, under a regent, Bairam Khan, who helped the young emperor expa ...

's court, and his revelation that he is a lost relative of the Mughal emperor. The novel was praised by Ursula Le Guin in a review in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' as a "sumptuous mixture of history with fable". '' Luka and the Fire of Life'', a sequel to ''Haroun and the Sea of Stories'', was published in November 2010 to critical acclaim. Earlier that year, he announced that he was writing his memoir, '' Joseph Anton: A Memoir'', which was published in September 2012. In 2012, Rushdie became one of the first major authors to embrace Booktrack (a company that synchronises ebooks with customised soundtracks), when he published his short story " In the South" on the platform.

Later works, novels, and essays, 2015–2024

2015 saw the publication of '' Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights'', a modern take on the ''

One Thousand and One Nights ''One Thousand and One Nights'' (, ), is a collection of Middle Eastern folktales compiled in the Arabic language during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as ''The Arabian Nights'', from the first English-language edition ( ...

''. Based on the conflict of scholar

Ibn Rushd Ibn Rushd (14 April 112611 December 1198), archaically Latinized as Averroes, was an Arab Muslim polymath and jurist from Al-Andalus who wrote about many subjects, including philosophy, theology, medicine, astronomy, physics, psychology, math ...

(from whom Rushdie's family name derives), Rushdie explores themes of

transnationalism Transnationalism is a research field and social phenomenon grown out of the heightened interconnectivity between people and the receding economic and social significance of boundaries among nation states. Overview The term "trans-national" was ...

and

cosmopolitanism Cosmopolitanism is the idea that all human beings are members of a single community. Its adherents are known as cosmopolitan or cosmopolite. Cosmopolitanism is both prescriptive and aspirational, believing humans can and should be " world citizen ...

by depicting a war of the universe with a supernatural world of jinns.

Ursula K. Le Guin Ursula Kroeber Le Guin ( ; Kroeber; October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) was an American author. She is best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the ''Earthsea'' fantas ...

wrote: "Rushdie is our

Scheherazade Scheherazade () is a major character and the storyteller in the frame story, frame narrative of the Middle Eastern collection of tales known as the ''One Thousand and One Nights''. Name According to modern scholarship, the name ''Scheherazade ...

, inexhaustibly enfolding story within story and unfolding tale after tale with such irrepressible delight that it comes as a shock to remember that, like her, he has lived the life of a storyteller in immediate peril. Scheherazade told her 1,001 tales to put off a stupid, cruel threat of death; Rushdie found himself under similar threat for telling an unwelcome tale. So far, like her, he has succeeded in escaping. May he continue to do so." In 2017, '' The Golden House'', a satirical novel set in contemporary America, was published. 2019 saw the publication of '' Quichotte'', a modern retelling of ''

Don Quixote , the full title being ''The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha'', is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Originally published in two parts in 1605 and 1615, the novel is considered a founding work of Western literature and is of ...

''. In 2021 '' Languages of Truth'', a collection of essays written between 2003 and 2020, was published. Rushdie's fifteenth novel '' Victory City'', described as an epic tale of a woman who breathes a fantastical empire into existence, was published in February 2023. The book was Rushdie's first released work after he was attacked and severely injured as he was about to give a public lecture in New York in 2022. In April 2024, his autobiographical book '' Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder'', in which Rushdie writes about the attack and his recovery, was published. It was longlisted for the 2024

National Book Award for Nonfiction The National Book Award for Nonfiction is one of five US annual National Book Awards, which are given by the National Book Foundation to recognize outstanding literary work by US citizens. They are awards "by writers to writers". The panelists a ...

Critical reception

Rushdie has had a string of commercially successful and critically acclaimed novels. His works have been shortlisted for the

five times, in 1981 for ''

'', 1983 for ''Shame'', 1988 for '' The Satanic Verses'', 1995 for '' The Moor's Last Sigh'', and in 2019 for ''Quichotte''. In 1981, he was awarded the prize. His 2005 novel '' Shalimar the Clown'' received the prestigious Hutch Crossword Book Award, and, in the UK, was a finalist for the Whitbread Book Awards. It was shortlisted for the 2007

International Dublin Literary Award The International Dublin Literary Award (), established as the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 1996, is presented each year for a novel written or translated into English. It promotes excellence in world literature and is solely ...

. Rushdie's works have spawned 30 book-length studies and more than 700 articles on his writing. He is frequently mentioned a favourite to win the

Nobel Prize in Literature The Nobel Prize in Literature, here meaning ''for'' Literature (), is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, "in ...

Academic and other activities

Rushdie has mentored younger Indian (and ethnic-Indian) writers, influenced an entire generation of Indo-Anglian writers, and is an influential writer in

in general. He opposed the British government's introduction of the ''Racial and Religious Hatred Act'', something he writes about in his contribution to ''Free Expression Is No Offence'', a collection of essays by several writers, published by

Penguin Penguins are a group of aquatic flightless birds from the family Spheniscidae () of the order Sphenisciformes (). They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere. Only one species, the Galápagos penguin, is equatorial, with a sm ...

in November 2005. Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie

Rushdie was the President of PEN American Center from 2004 to 2006 and founder of the PEN World Voices Festival. In 2007, he began a five-year term as Distinguished Writer in Residence at

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georg ...

, Georgia, where he has also deposited his archives. In May 2008, he was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the

. In 2014, he taught a seminar on British Literature and served as the 2015 keynote speaker In September 2015, he joined the

Journalism Faculty as a Distinguished Writer in Residence. Rushdie is a member of the advisory board of The Lunchbox Fund, a non-profit organisation that provides daily meals to students of township schools in

Soweto Soweto () is a Township (South Africa), township of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality in Gauteng, South Africa, bordering the city's mining belt in the south. Its name is an English syllabic abbreviation for ''South Western T ...

of South Africa. He is a member of the advisory board of the

Secular Coalition for America The Secular Coalition for America is an advocacy group located in Washington D.C. It describes itself as "protecting the equal rights of nonreligious Americans." The Secular Coalition has chapters in all 50 states and Puerto Rico, composed of lo ...

, an advocacy group representing the interests of atheistic and humanistic Americans in Washington, D.C., and a patron of

Humanists UK Humanists UK, known from 1967 until May 2017 as the British Humanist Association (BHA), is a charitable organisation which promotes secular humanism and aims to represent Irreligion in the United Kingdom, non-religious people in the UK throug ...

(formerly the British Humanist Association). He is a laureate of the

International Academy of Humanism The International Academy of Humanism, established in 1983, is a programme of the Council for Secular Humanism. It was established to recognize great humanists and disseminate humanist thinking. According to its declared mission, members of the ...

. In November 2010 he became a founding patron of Ralston College, a new liberal arts college that has adopted as its motto a Latin translation of a phrase ("free speech is life itself") from an address he gave at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

in 1991 to mark the 200th anniversary of the

First Amendment to the United States Constitution The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prevents Federal government of the United States, Congress from making laws respecting an Establishment Clause, establishment of religion; prohibiting the Free Exercise Cla ...

Film and television

Though he enjoys writing, Rushdie says he would have become an actor if his writing career had not been successful. From early childhood, he dreamed of appearing in Hollywood films (which he later realised in his frequent cameo appearances). Rushdie includes fictional television and movie characters in some of his writings. He had a

cameo appearance A cameo appearance, also called a cameo role and often shortened to just cameo (), is a brief guest appearance of a well-known person or character in a work of the performing arts. These roles are generally small, many of them non-speaking on ...

in the film '' Bridget Jones's Diary'' based on the book of the same name, which is itself full of literary in-jokes. On 12 May 2006, Rushdie was a guest host on '' The Charlie Rose Show'', where he interviewed Indo-Canadian filmmaker

Deepa Mehta Deepa Mehta, (; born 15 September 1950) is an Indian-born Canadian film director and screenwriter, best known for her Elements Trilogy, Fire (1996 film), ''Fire'' (1996), ''Earth (1998 film), Earth'' (1998), and ''Water (2005 film), Water'' (2 ...

, whose 2005 film ''

Water Water is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula . It is a transparent, tasteless, odorless, and Color of water, nearly colorless chemical substance. It is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known liv ...

'' faced violent protests. He appears in the role of Helen Hunt's obstetrician-gynaecologist in the film adaptation (Hunt's directorial debut) of Elinor Lipman's novel '' Then She Found Me''. In September 2008, and again in March 2009, he appeared as a panellist on the HBO programme ''

Real Time with Bill Maher ''Real Time with Bill Maher'' is an American television talk show that airs weekly on HBO, hosted by stand-up comedy, comedian and political satire, political satirist Bill Maher. Much like his previous series ''Politically Incorrect'' on Comedy ...

''. Rushdie has said that he was approached for a cameo in '' Talladega Nights'': "They had this idea, just one shot in which three very, very unlikely people were seen as

NASCAR The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC (NASCAR) is an American auto racing sanctioning and operating company that is best known for stock car racing. It is considered to be one of the top ranked motorsports organizations in ...

drivers. And I think they approached

Julian Schnabel Julian Schnabel (born October 26, 1951) is an American painter and filmmaker. In the 1980s, he received international attention for his "plate paintings"—with broken ceramic plates set onto large-scale paintings. Since the 1990s, he has been a ...

Lou Reed Lewis Allan Reed (March 2, 1942October 27, 2013) was an American musician and songwriter. He was the guitarist, singer, and principal songwriter for the rock band the Velvet Underground and had a solo career that spanned five decades. Althoug ...

, and me. We were all supposed to be wearing the uniforms and the helmet, walking in slow motion with the heat haze." In the end, their schedules did not allow for it. In 2009, Rushdie signed a petition in support of film director

Roman Polanski Raymond Roman Thierry Polański (; born 18 August 1933) is a Polish and French filmmaker and actor. He is the recipient of List of awards and nominations received by Roman Polanski, numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, three Britis ...

, calling for his release after Polanski was arrested in Switzerland in relation to his 1977 charge for drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl. Rushdie collaborated on the screenplay for the cinematic adaptation of his novel ''Midnight's Children'' with director

. The film was also called ''

''.

Seema Biswas Seema Biswas (born 14 January 1965) is an Indian actress who works in Hindi films and the theatre. She gained prominence after playing the role of Phoolan Devi in Shekhar Kapur, Shekhar Kapur's film ''Bandit Queen'' (1994), for which she won the ...

Shabana Azmi Shabana Azmi (born 18 September 1950) is an Indian actress of film, television and theatre. Her career in the Hindi cinema, Hindi film industry has spanned Shabana Azmi filmography, over 160 films, mostly within independent and neorealist paral ...

Nandita Das Nandita Das (born 7 November 1969) is an Indian actress and director. She has acted in over 40 feature films in ten different languages. Das appeared in the films ''Fire'' (1996), ''Earth'' (1998), '' Bawandar'' (2000), '' Kannathil Muthamittal' ...

, and Irrfan Khan participated in the film. Production began in September 2010; the film was released in 2012. Rushdie announced in June 2011 that he had written the first draft of a script for a new television series for the US cable network Showtime, a project on which he will also serve as an executive producer. The new series, to be called ''The Next People'', will be, according to Rushdie, "a sort of paranoid science-fiction series, people disappearing and being replaced by other people." The idea of a television series was suggested by his US agents, said Rushdie, who felt that television would allow him more creative control than feature film. ''The Next People'' is being made by the British film production company

Working Title A working title is a preliminary name for a product or project. The usage is especially common in film and TV, gaming, music and publishing. It is often styled in trade publications as (wt) and is synonymous with production title and tentative ...

, the firm behind projects including ''

Four Weddings and a Funeral ''Four Weddings and a Funeral'' is a 1994 British romantic comedy film directed by Mike Newell. It is the first of several films by screenwriter Richard Curtis to star Hugh Grant, and follows the adventures of Charles (Grant) and his circle of ...

'' and '' Shaun of the Dead''. In 2017, Rushdie appeared as himself in episode 3 of season 9 of ''

Curb Your Enthusiasm ''Curb Your Enthusiasm'', also known colloquially simply as ''Curb'', is an American television comedy of manners created by Larry David that premiered on HBO with an hour-long special in October 17, 1999, followed by 12 seasons broadcast from Oc ...

'', sharing scenes with

Larry David Lawrence Gene David (born July 2, 1947) is an American comedian, writer, actor, and television producer. He is known for his dry wit, portrayals of awkward social situations, and brutally honest takes on everyday life. He has received two Prim ...

to offer advice on how Larry should deal with the ''fatwa'' that has been ordered against him.

''The Satanic Verses'' and the ''fatwa''

The publication of '' The Satanic Verses'' by Viking Penguin Publishing in September 1988 caused immediate controversy in the

Islamic world The terms Islamic world and Muslim world commonly refer to the Islamic community, which is also known as the Ummah. This consists of all those who adhere to the religious beliefs, politics, and laws of Islam or to societies in which Islam is ...

because of what was seen by some to be an irreverent

depictions of Muhammad The permissibility of depictions of Muhammad in Islam has been a contentious issue. Oral and written descriptions of Muhammad are readily accepted by all traditions of Islam, but there is disagreement about visual depictions. The Quran does no ...

. The title refers to a disputed Muslim tradition that is referenced in the book. According to this tradition, Muhammad ( Mahound in the book) added verses ('' Ayah'') to the

Quran The Quran, also Romanization, romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a Waḥy, revelation directly from God in Islam, God (''Allah, Allāh''). It is organized in 114 chapters (, ) which ...

accepting three Arabian pagan goddesses who were worshiped in

Mecca Mecca, officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, is the capital of Mecca Province in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia; it is the Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow valley above ...

as divine beings. According to the legend, Muhammad later revoked the verses, saying the devil tempted him to utter these lines to appease the Meccans (hence the "Satanic" verses). However, the narrator reveals to the reader that these disputed verses were actually from the mouth of the

Archangel Gabriel In the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), Gabriel ( ) is an archangel with the power to announce God's will to mankind, as the messenger of God. He is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Quran. Many Chris ...

. The book was banned in many countries with large Muslim communities, including India, Iran, Bangladesh, Sudan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Thailand, Tanzania, Indonesia, Singapore, Venezuela, and Pakistan. In total, 20 countries banned the book. In response to the protests, on 22 January 1989, Rushdie published a column in ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. First published in 1791, it is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper. In 1993 it was acquired by Guardian Media Group Limited, and operated as a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' ...

'' that called Muhammad "one of the great geniuses of world history," but noted that Islamic doctrine holds Muhammad to be human, and in no way perfect. He held that the novel is not "an anti-religious novel. It is, however, an attempt to write about migration, its stresses and transformations." On 14 February 1989—

Valentine's Day Valentine's Day, also called Saint Valentine's Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is celebrated annually on February 14. It originated as a Christian feast day honoring a Christian martyrs, martyr named Saint Valentine, Valentine, and ...

, and also the day of his close friend

Bruce Chatwin Charles Bruce Chatwin (13 May 194018 January 1989) was an English travel writer, novelist and journalist. His first book, ''In Patagonia'' (1977), established Chatwin as a travel writer, although he considered himself instead a storytelling, s ...

's funeral—a ''

'' ordering Rushdie's execution was proclaimed on Radio Tehran by

Ayatollah Ayatollah (, ; ; ) is an Title of honor, honorific title for high-ranking Twelver Shia clergy. It came into widespread usage in the 20th century. Originally used as a title bestowed by popular/clerical acclaim for a small number of the most di ...

Khomeini, the

Supreme leader of Iran The supreme leader of Iran, also referred to as the supreme leader of the Islamic Revolution, but officially called the supreme leadership authority, is the head of state and the highest political and religious authority of Iran (above the Presi ...

at the time, calling the book "

blasphemous Blasphemy refers to an insult that shows contempt, disrespect or lack of Reverence (emotion), reverence concerning a deity, an object considered sacred, or something considered Sanctity of life, inviolable. Some religions, especially Abrahamic o ...

against Islam". Chapter IV of the book depicts the character of an

Imam Imam (; , '; : , ') is an Islamic leadership position. For Sunni Islam, Sunni Muslims, Imam is most commonly used as the title of a prayer leader of a mosque. In this context, imams may lead Salah, Islamic prayers, serve as community leaders, ...

in exile who returns to incite revolt from the people of his country with no regard for their safety. According to Khomeini's son, his father never read the book. A bounty was offered for Rushdie's death, and he was thus forced to live under police protection for several years. On 7 March 1989, the United Kingdom and

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

broke diplomatic relations over the Rushdie controversy. In 1989, ''

'' published "Words For Salman Rushdie": "28 distinguished writers born in 21 countries speak to him from their common land – the country of literature. For expressing their ideas publicly in the past many of these writers have suffered censorship, exile – forced or self-imposed – and imprisonment."

Czesław Miłosz Czesław Miłosz ( , , ; 30 June 1911 – 14 August 2004) was a Polish Americans, Polish-American poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat. He primarily wrote his poetry in Polish language, Polish. Regarded as one of the great poets of the ...

wrote: "I have particular reasons to defend your rights, Mr. Rushdie. My books have been forbidden in many countries or have had whole passages censored out. I'm grateful to people who stood then by the principle of free expression, and I back you now in my turn."

Ralph Ellison Ralph Waldo Ellison (March 1, 1913 – April 16, 1994) was an American writer, literary critic, and scholar best known for his novel '' Invisible Man'', which won the National Book Award in 1953. Ellison wrote '' Shadow and Act'' (1964), a co ...

: "You deserve the full and passionate solidarity of any man of dignity, but I am afraid this is too little. This story of a man alone against worldwide intolerance, and of a book alone against the craziness of the media, can become the story of many others. The bell tolls for all of us."

Umberto Eco Umberto Eco (5 January 1932 – 19 February 2016) was an Italian Medieval studies, medievalist, philosopher, Semiotics, semiotician, novelist, cultural critic, and political and social commentator. In English, he is best known for his popular ...

: "Keep to your convictions. Try to protect yourself. A death sentence is a rather harsh review." Anita Desai: "Silence, exile and cunning, yes. And courage."

Christopher Hitchens Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was a British and American author and journalist. He was the author of Christopher Hitchens bibliography, 18 books on faith, religion, culture, politics, and literature. He was born ...

recalled: "When the ''Washington Post'' telephoned me on Valentine's Day 1989 to ask for my opinion about the Ayatollah Khomeini's ''fatwah'', I felt at once here was something that completely committed me. It was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying, and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humour, the individual, and the defense of free expression. Plus, of course, friendship–although I'd like to think my response would have been the same even if I hadn't known Salman at all. To re-state the premise of the argument again: the theocratic head of a foreign despotism offers money in his own name in order to suborn the murder of a civilian of another country, for the offense of writing a work of fiction. No more root-and-branch challenge to the values of

the Enlightenment The Age of Enlightenment (also the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment) was a European intellectual and philosophical movement active from the late 17th to early 19th century. Chiefly valuing knowledge gained through rationalism and empirici ...

(on the bicentennial of the fall of the Bastille), or to the First Amendment to the Constitution, could be imagined." Rushdie wrote: "I have often been asked if Christopher defended me because he was my close friend. The truth is that he became my close friend because he wanted to defend me ... He and I found ourselves describing our ideas, without conferring, in almost identical terms. I began to understand that while I had not chosen the battle it was at least the right battle, because in it everything that I loved and valued (literature, freedom, irreverence, freedom, irreligion, freedom) was ranged against everything I detested (fanaticism, violence, bigotry, humorlessness, philistinism, and the new offense culture of the age). Then I read Christopher using exactly the same everything-he-loved-versus-everything-he-hated trope, and felt … understood." In 1993, 100 writers and intellectuals from the Muslim world, including

Adonis In Greek mythology, Adonis (; ) was the mortal lover of the goddesses Aphrodite and Persephone. He was considered to be the ideal of male beauty in classical antiquity. The myth goes that Adonis was gored by a wild boar during a hunting trip ...

, Mohammed Arkoun,

Mahmoud Darwish Mahmoud Darwish (; 13 March 1941 – 9 August 2008) was a Palestinians, Palestinian poet and author who was regarded as Palestine's national poet. In 1988 Darwish wrote the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, which was the formal declarat ...

Amin Maalouf Amin Maalouf (; ; born 25 February 1949) is a Lebanese people in France, Lebanese-born French"A ...

and

Edward Said Edward Wadie Said (1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American academic, literary critic, and political activist. As a professor of literature at Columbia University, he was among the founders of Postcolonialism, post-co ...

expressed solidarity in the collection ''For Rushdie''.

Naguib Mahfouz Naguib Mahfouz Abdelaziz Ibrahim Ahmed Al-Basha (, ; 11 December 1911 – 30 August 2006) was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature. In awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy described him as a writer "who, through wo ...

wrote: "The veritable terrorism of which he is a target is unjustifiable, indefensible. One idea can only be opposed by other ideas. Even if the punishment is carried out, the idea as well as the book will remain." Tahar Ben Jelloun wrote that the fatwa was "intolerable, inadmissible and has nothing to do with the tolerant Islam that I was taught" and threatened "the ability to create characters and develop them in the space and time chosen by the writer." Rabah Belamri wrote "A society that refuses to question itself, that denies artists and thinkers the right to raise doubts, that dares not laugh at itself, has no hope of prospering." The composer Ahmed Essyad wrote a piece of music dedicated "To Salman Rushdie, so that, as an artist, he can write what I disagree with." Rushdie expressed gratitude for "anthology of blows struck in the fight against obscurantism and fanaticism" by "the most gifted, the most learned, the most important voices of the Muslim and Arab world, gathered together to subject my work and the furor surrounding it to so brilliant, so many-sided, so judicious an examination." When, on

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...

, he was asked for a response to the threat, Rushdie said, "Frankly, I wish I had written a more critical book," and "I'm very sad that it should have happened. It's not true that this book is a blasphemy against Islam. I doubt very much that Khomeini or anyone else in Iran has read the book or more than selected extracts out of context." Later, he wrote that he was "proud, then and always", of that statement; while he did not feel his book was especially critical of Islam, "a religion whose leaders behaved in this way could probably use a little criticism." The publication of the book and the ''fatwa'' sparked violence around the world, with bookstores firebombed. Muslim communities in several nations in the West held public rallies,

burning Combustion, or burning, is a high-temperature exothermic redox chemical reaction between a fuel (the reductant) and an oxidant, usually atmospheric oxygen, that produces oxidized, often gaseous products, in a mixture termed as smoke. Combust ...

copies of the book. Several people associated with translating or publishing the book were attacked, seriously injured, and even killed. Many more people died in riots in some countries. Despite the danger posed by the fatwa, Rushdie made a public appearance at London's

Wembley Stadium Wembley Stadium, currently branded as Wembley Stadium connected by EE Limited, EE for sponsorship reasons, is an association football stadium in Wembley, London. It opened in 2007 on the site of the Wembley Stadium (1923), original Wembley Sta ...

on 11 August 1993, during a concert by U2. In 2010, U2 bassist Adam Clayton recalled that "lead vocalist Bono had been calling Salman Rushdie from the stage every night on the Zoo TV tour. When we played Wembley, Salman showed up in person and the stadium erupted. You ouldtell from rummerLarry Mullen, Jr.'s face that we weren't expecting it. Salman was a regular visitor after that. He had a backstage pass and he used it as often as possible. For a man who was supposed to be in hiding, it was remarkably easy to see him around the place." On 24 September 1998, as a precondition to the restoration of diplomatic relations with the UK, the Iranian government, then headed by

Mohammad Khatami Mohammad Khatami (born 14 October 1943) is an Iranian politician and Shia cleric who served as the fifth president of Iran from 3 August 1997 to 3 August 2005. He also served as Iran's Minister of Culture from 1982 to 1992. Later, he was critic ...

, gave a public commitment that it would "neither support nor hinder assassination operations on Rushdie." Hardliners in Iran have continued to reaffirm the death sentence. In early 2005, Khomeini's ''fatwa'' was reaffirmed by Iran's current leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a message to Muslim pilgrims making the annual pilgrimage to

. Additionally, the Revolutionary Guards declared that the death sentence on him is still valid. Rushdie has reported that he still receives a "sort of Valentine's card" from Iran each year on 14 February letting him know the country has not forgotten the vow to kill him and has jokingly referred to it as " my unfunny Valentine". He said, "It's reached the point where it's a piece of rhetoric rather than a real threat." Despite the threats on Rushdie personally, he said that his family has never been threatened, and that his mother, who lived in Pakistan during the later years of her life, even received outpourings of support. Rushdie himself has been prevented from entering Pakistan, however. A former bodyguard to Rushdie, Ron Evans, planned to publish a book recounting the behaviour of the author during the time he was in hiding. Evans said Rushdie tried to profit financially from the ''fatwa'' and was suicidal, but Rushdie dismissed the book as a "bunch of lies" and took legal action against Evans, his co-author and their publisher. On 26 August 2008, Rushdie received an apology at the High Court in London from all three parties. A memoir of his years of hiding, ''Joseph Anton'', was released on 18 September 2012; "Joseph Anton" was Rushdie's secret alias during the height of the controversy. In February 1997, Ayatollah Hasan Sane'i, leader of the ''bonyad panzdah-e khordad'' (Fifteenth of Khordad Foundation), reported that the blood money offered by the foundation for the assassination of Rushdie would be increased from $2 million to $2.5 million. Then a semi-official religious foundation in Iran increased the reward it had offered for the killing of Rushdie from $2.8 million to $3.3 million. In November 2015, former Indian minister P. Chidambaram acknowledged that banning ''The Satanic Verses'' was wrong. In 1998, Iran's former president

proclaimed the fatwa "finished"; but it has never been officially lifted, and in fact has been reiterated several times by Ali Khamenei and other religious officials. Yet more money was added to the bounty in February 2016.

Failed assassination attempt (1989)

On 3 August 1989, while a man using the alias Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh was priming a book bomb loaded with

RDX RDX (Research Department Explosive or Royal Demolition Explosive) or hexogen, among other names, is an organic compound with the formula (CH2N2O2)3. It is white, odorless, and tasteless, widely used as an explosive. Chemically, it is classified ...

explosives in a hotel in

Paddington Paddington is an area in the City of Westminster, in central London, England. A medieval parish then a metropolitan borough of the County of London, it was integrated with Westminster and Greater London in 1965. Paddington station, designed b ...

, Central London, the bomb exploded prematurely, destroying two floors of the hotel and killing Mazeh. A previously unknown Lebanese group, the Organization of the Mujahidin of Islam, said he died preparing an attack "on the

apostate Apostasy (; ) is the formal disaffiliation from, abandonment of, or renunciation of a religion by a person. It can also be defined within the broader context of embracing an opinion that is contrary to one's previous religious beliefs. One who ...

Rushdie". There is a shrine in Tehran's Behesht-e Zahra cemetery for Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh that says he was "Martyred in London, 3 August 1989. The first martyr to die on a mission to kill Salman Rushdie." Mazeh's mother was invited to relocate to Iran, and the Islamic World Movement of Martyrs' Commemoration built his shrine in the cemetery that holds thousands of Iranian soldiers slain in the

Iran–Iraq War The Iran–Iraq War, also known as the First Gulf War, was an armed conflict between Iran and Iraq that lasted from September 1980 to August 1988. Active hostilities began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran and lasted for nearly eight years, unti ...

Translators attacked

In 1991 an Italian translator of the book was stabbed but survived. Days later Hitoshi Igarashi, its Japanese translator and a convert to Islam, was stabbed to death. Two years later its Norwegian publisher, William Nygaard, was shot three times but survived.

Hezbollah's comments (2006)

During the 2006 ''Jyllands-Posten'' Muhammad cartoons controversy,

Hezbollah Hezbollah ( ; , , ) is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group. Hezbollah's paramilitary wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese Parliament. I ...

leader

Hassan Nasrallah Hassan Nasrallah (, ; 31 August 196027 September 2024) was a Lebanese cleric and politician who served as the third secretary-general of Hezbollah, a Shia Islamist political party and militia, from 1992 until his assassination in 2024. Bor ...

declared that "If there had been a Muslim to carry out Imam Khomeini's ''fatwa'' against the renegade Salman Rushdie, this rabble who insult our Prophet Mohammed in Denmark, Norway and France would not have dared to do so. I am sure there are millions of Muslims who are ready to give their lives to defend our prophet's honour and we have to be ready to do anything for that."

''International Guerillas'' (1990)

In 1990, soon after the publication of ''The Satanic Verses'', a Pakistani film entitled '' International Gorillay'' (''International Guerillas'') was released that depicted Rushdie as a "James Bond-style villain" plotting to cause the downfall of Pakistan by opening a chain of casinos and discos in the country; he is ultimately killed at the end of the movie. The film was popular with Pakistani audiences, and it "presents Rushdie as a Rambo-like figure pursued by four Pakistani guerrillas". The

British Board of Film Classification The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) is a non-governmental organization, non-governmental organisation founded by the British film industry in 1912 and responsible for the national classification and censorship of films exhibited ...

refused to allow it a certificate; "it was felt that the portrayal of Rushdie might qualify as criminal libel, causing a breach of the peace as opposed to merely tarnishing his reputation." This effectively prevented the release of the film in the UK. Two months later, however, Rushdie himself wrote to the board, saying that while he thought the film "a distorted, incompetent piece of trash", he would not sue if it were released. He later said, "If that film had been banned, it would have become the hottest video in town: everyone would have seen it". While the film was a great hit in Pakistan, it went virtually unnoticed elsewhere.

Al-Qaeda hit list (2010)

In 2010,

Anwar al-Awlaki Anwar Nasser Abdulla al-Awlaki (; April 21 or 22, 1971September 30, 2011) was an American-Yemeni lecturer assassinated Drone strikes in Yemen, in Yemen in 2011 by a U.S. government drone strike ordered by President Barack Obama. Al-Awlaki was th ...

published an Al-Qaeda hit list in ''Inspire'' magazine, including Rushdie along with other figures claimed to have insulted Islam, including Ayaan Hirsi Ali, cartoonist Lars Vilks, and three ''Jyllands-Posten'' staff members: Kurt Westergaard, Carsten Juste, and

Flemming Rose Flemming Rose (born 11 March 1958) is a Danish journalist, author and Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. He previously served as foreign affairs editor at the Danish newspaper ''Jyllands-Posten''. As culture editor of the same newspaper, he was ...

. The list was later expanded to include Stéphane "Charb" Charbonnier, who was murdered in a terror attack on ''Charlie Hebdo'' in Paris, along with 11 other people. After the attack, Al-Qaeda called for more killings. Rushdie expressed his support for ''Charlie Hebdo'', saying "I stand with ''Charlie Hebdo'', as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity ... religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today." In response to the attack, Rushdie commented on what he perceived as victim-blaming in the media, stating: "You can dislike ''Charlie Hebdo''.... But the fact that you dislike them has nothing to do with their right to speak. The fact you dislike them certainly doesn't in any way excuse their murder."

Jaipur Literature Festival (2012)

Rushdie was due to appear at the

Jaipur Literature Festival The Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF), often hailed as the "''greatest literary show on Earth''," is a renowned annual cultural and literary festival held in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. Established in 2006 by writers Namita Gokhale and William Dalry ...

in January 2012 in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. However, he later cancelled his event appearance, and a further tour of India at the time, citing a possible threat to his life as the primary reason. Several days after, he indicated that state police agencies had lied, in order to keep him away, when they informed him that paid assassins were being sent to Jaipur to kill him. Police contended that they were afraid Rushdie would read from the banned ''The Satanic Verses'', and that the threat was real, considering imminent protests by Muslim organizations. Meanwhile, Indian authors Ruchir Joshi, Jeet Thayil, Hari Kunzru and Amitava Kumar abruptly left the festival, and Jaipur, after reading excerpts from Rushdie's banned novel at the festival. The four were urged to leave by organizers as there was a real possibility they would be arrested. A proposed video link session between Rushdie and the Jaipur Literature Festival was also cancelled at the last minute after the government pressured the festival to stop it. Rushdie returned to India to address a conference in New Delhi on 16 March 2012.

2022 murder attempt

On 12 August 2022, while about to start a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in

Chautauqua Chautauqua ( ) is an adult education and social movement in the United States that peaked in popularity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Chautauqua assemblies expanded and spread throughout rural America until the mid-1920s. The Cha ...

, New York, Rushdie was attacked by a man who rushed onto the stage and stabbed him repeatedly, including in the face, neck and abdomen. The attacker was pulled away before being taken into custody by a state trooper; Rushdie was airlifted to UPMC Hamot, a tertiary trauma centre in

Erie, Pennsylvania Erie is a city on the south shore of Lake Erie and the county seat of Erie County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, fifth-most populous city in Pennsylvania and the most populous in Northwestern Pen ...

, where he underwent surgery before being put on a ventilator. Security measures at UPMC Hamot were increased due to the potential threat of further attempts on his life. This included 24-hour protection with a security officer outside his room and searches being performed upon entry into the hospital. The suspect was identified as 24-year-old Hadi Matar of Fairview, New Jersey. Later in the day, Rushdie's agent, Andrew Wylie, confirmed that Rushdie had received stab injuries to the liver and hand, and that he might lose an eye. A day later, Rushdie was taken off the ventilator and was able to speak. On 23 October 2022, Wylie reported that Rushdie had lost sight in one eye and the use of one hand but survived the murder attempt. Rushdie's memoir about the attack, '' Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder'', was published in April 2024. It hit number one in the Sunday Times Bestsellers List in the General hardbacks category. In the memoir, Rushdie engages in fictional conversations with the assailant, who is referred to as 'A.' The jury selection for the trial was originally scheduled to begin on 8 January 2024. However, Matar's lawyer successfully petitioned to delay the trial, arguing that they are entitled to see the memoir and any related materials before Matar stands trial, as the documents constitute evidence. Rushdie recalled experiencing a vivid dream of being stabbed in an ancient

Roman amphitheatre Roman amphitheatres are theatres — large, circular or oval open-air venues with tiered seating — built by the ancient Romans. They were used for events such as gladiator combats, ''venationes'' (animal slayings) and executions. About List of R ...

two days before the actual stabbing occurred. The intensity of the dream caused him to consider canceling the event until he eventually decided on attending. In February 2025, the attacker, Hadi Matar, was found guilty of attempted murder and assault in connection with the stabbing. In May 2025, Matar was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the attack.

Awards, honours, and recognition

Salman Rushdie has received many plaudits for his writings, including the European Union's Aristeion Prize for Literature, the Premio Grinzane Cavour (Italy), and the Writer of the Year Award in Germany, and many of literature's highest honours. Awards and honours include: * Austrian State Prize for European Literature (1993) *

(1981) *

Doctor Honoris Causa An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hono ...

(Dr.h.c.) from the

University of Liège The University of Liège (), or ULiège, is a major public university of the French Community of Belgium founded in 1817 and based in Liège, Wallonia, Belgium. Its official language is French (language), French. History The university was foun ...

, Belgium (1999) * Golden PEN Award * Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award (2014) * Honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters (L.H.D.) from

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a state university system, system of Public university, public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. The system has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration o ...

(2018) * Honorary degree of

Doctor of Letters Doctor of Letters (D.Litt., Litt.D., Latin: ' or '), also termed Doctor of Literature in some countries, is a terminal degree in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. In the United States, at universities such as Drew University, the degree ...

(Litt.D.) from

(2015) * James Joyce Award from University College Dublin (2008) * Outstanding Lifetime Achievement in Cultural Humanism from Harvard University (2007) *PEN Pinter Prize (UK) *St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates *Swiss Freethinkers Award 2019 *Champion of Writers Award from Authors Guild Foundation in 2025

Knighthood

Rushdie was Knight Bachelor, knighted for services to literature in the 2007 Birthday Honours, Queen's Birthday Honours on 16 June 2007. He remarked: "I am thrilled and humbled to receive this great honour, and am very grateful that my work has been recognised in this way." In response to his knighthood, many nations with Muslim majorities protested. Parliamentarians of several of these countries condemned the action, and Iran and Pakistan called in their British envoys to protest formally. Controversial condemnation issued by Pakistan's Religious Affairs Minister Muhammad Ijaz-ul-Haq was in turn rebuffed by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Several called publicly for his death. Some non-Muslims expressed disappointment at Rushdie's knighthood, claiming that the writer did not merit such an honour and there were several other writers who deserved the knighthood more than Rushdie. Al-Qaeda condemned the Rushdie honour. The group's then-leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was quoted as saying in an audio recording that the UK's award for Rushdie was "an insult to Islam", and it was planning "a very precise response." When asked if the knighthood was an insult to Muslims,

answered "''Midnight's Children'' did not just win the Booker, and Salman did not just later win the Booker of Bookers, ''Midnight's Children'' won the main literary award in Iran, people tend to forget. When the fatwa was issued against him by a senile theocratic dictator who had run his own country into beggary and bankruptcy and misery, every Arab and Muslim writer worthy of the name, all signed, and wrote in a book for Salman, we identify our cause with you, and your struggle with free expression in our culture. If you say that Muslims are being offended by this, and you lump them all together, you immediately grant that they are in fact represented by the most extreme, homicidal, fanatical, illiterate, intolerant people who not only haven't read this book, but couldn't read it. And that's an insult to Islam!" Rushdie was appointed a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the 2022 Birthday Honours for services to literature.

Religious and political beliefs

Religious background

Rushdie came from a liberal Muslim family, but he is an atheist. In a 2006 interview with PBS, Rushdie called himself a "hardline atheist". In 1989, in an interview following the ''fatwa'', Rushdie said that he was in a sense a lapsed Muslim, though "shaped by Muslim culture more than any other," and a student of Islam. In another interview the same year, he said, "My point of view is that of a secular human being. I do not believe in supernatural entities, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim or Hindu." In December 1990, Rushdie issued a statement reaffirming his Muslim faith, distancing himself from statements made by characters in ''Satanic Verses'' that cast aspersion on Islam or Prophet Mohammad, and opposing the release of the paperback edition of the novel. Later, in 1992, he cited the release of the statement as perhaps his lowest point, regretting its language, which he said he had not written. Rushdie advocates the application of higher criticism, pioneered during the late 19th century. In a guest opinion piece printed in ''The Washington Post'' and ''

'' in mid-August 2005, Rushdie called for a reform in Islam. Rushdie is a critic of moral and cultural relativism. In an interview with Point of Inquiry in 2006, he described his view as follows: Rushdie is an advocate of religious satire. He condemned the Charlie Hebdo shooting and defended comedic criticism of religions in a comment originally posted on English PEN where he called religions a medieval form of unreason. Rushdie called the attack a consequence of "religious totalitarianism", which according to him had caused "a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam". He said: When asked about reading and writing as a human right, Rushdie states: "...there are the larger stories, the grand narratives that we live in, which are things like nation, and family, and clan, and so on. Those stories are considered to be treated reverentially. They need to be part of the way in which we conduct the discourse of our lives and to prevent people from doing something very damaging to human nature." Though Rushdie believes the freedoms of literature to be universal, the bulk of his fictions portrays the struggles of the marginally underrepresented. This can be seen in his portrayal of the role of women in his novel ''

''. In this novel, Rushdie, "suggests that it is women who suffer most from the injustices of the Pakistani social order." His support of feminism can also be seen in a 2015 interview with ''New York (magazine), New York'' magazine's ''The Cut (website), The Cut''.

Political background

UK politics

In 2006, Rushdie stated that he supported comments by Jack Straw, then-Leader of the House of Commons from Labour, who United Kingdom debate over veils, criticized the wearing of the niqab (a veil that covers all of the face except the eyes). Rushdie stated that his three sisters would never wear the veil. He said, "I think the battle against the veil has been a long and continuing battle against the limitation of women, so in that sense I'm completely on Straw's side."

US politics

Rushdie supported the 1999 NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, leading historian Tariq Ali to label Rushdie part of what he considered to be "warrior writers" as "the belligerati". He was supportive of the US-led campaign to remove the Taliban in Afghanistan, which began in 2001 but was a vocal critic of the 2003 Iraq War, war in Iraq. He stated that while there was a "case to be made for the removal of Saddam Hussein", US unilateral military intervention was unjustifiable. Terry Eagleton, a former admirer of Rushdie's work and Marxist literary critic, criticized him, saying he "cheered on the Pentagon's criminal ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan." Eagleton subsequently apologized for having misrepresented Rushdie's views. Rushdie supported the election of Barack Obama for the US presidency and has often criticized the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party. He was involved in the Occupy Movement, both as a presence at Occupy Boston and as a founding member of Occupy Writers. Rushdie is a supporter of gun control, blaming 2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting, a shooting at a Colorado cinema in July 2012 on the American right to keep and bear arms. He acquired American citizenship in 2016 and voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 United States presidential election, that year's election. Noting the rise of "populist authoritarian demagoguery" around the world, Rushdie said there was "a willingness amongst at least some part of the [US] population to cease to value the democratic values enshrined in the first amendment. So I think the problem is, I would now say, political more than primarily religious".

Against religious extremism

In the wake of the ''Jyllands-Posten'' Muhammad cartoons controversy in March 2006 Rushdie signed the manifesto ''Together Facing the New Totalitarianism'', a statement warning of the dangers of religious extremism. The Manifesto was published in the left-leaning French weekly ''Charlie Hebdo'' in March 2006. When Amnesty International suspended human rights activist Gita Sahgal for saying to the press that she thought the organization should distance itself from Moazzam Begg and his organization, Rushdie said:

Amnesty…has done its reputation incalculable damage by allying itself with Moazzam Begg and his group Cageprisoners, and holding them up as human rights advocates. It looks very much as if Amnesty's leadership is suffering from a kind of moral bankruptcy, and has lost the ability to distinguish right from wrong. It has greatly compounded its error by suspending the redoubtable Gita Sahgal for the crime of going public with her concerns. Gita Sahgal is a woman of immense integrity and distinction. ... It is people like Gita Sahgal who are the true voices of the human rights movement; Amnesty and Begg have revealed, by their statements and actions, that they deserve our contempt.

In July 2020, Rushdie was one of the 153 signers of the "Harper's Letter", also known as "A Letter on Justice and Open Debate", that expressed concern that "the free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted." In October 2023, Rushdie expressed his "horror" at both Hamas' 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, attack on Israel and Israel's Gaza war, retaliation in the Gaza Strip and called for a "cessation in hostilities". In May 2024, Rushdie argued that if a Palestinian state ever came into being, it would resemble a "Taliban-like state" and become a client state of Iran. He further stated, "There's an emotional reaction to the death in Gaza, and that's absolutely right. But when it slides over towards antisemitism and sometimes to actual support of Hamas, then it's very problematic." He voiced his puzzlement regarding the current support of progressive students for what he described as a "fascist terrorist group".

South Asian politics and Kashmir

Rushdie has been critical of Pakistan's former Prime Minister Imran Khan after Khan took personal jabs at him in a 2012 interview. Khan had called Rushdie "unbalanced", saying he has the "mindset of a small man", claiming they had "never met" and he would never "want to meet him ever", despite the two being spotted together in public numerous times. Rushdie has expressed his preference for India over Pakistan on numerous occasions in writing and on live television interviews. In one such interview in 2003, Rushdie said "Pakistan sucks" after being asked about why he felt more like an outsider there than in India or England. He cited India's diversity, openness, and "richness of life experience" as his preference over Pakistan's "airlessness", resulting from a lack of personal freedom, widespread public corruption, and inter-ethnic tension. In Indian politics, Rushdie has criticized the Bharatiya Janata Party and its chairperson, the incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In a 2006 interview about his novel '' Shalimar the Clown'', Rushdie laments the Kashmir conflict, division of Kashmir into zones of Jammu and Kashmir (union territory), Indian and Azad Kashmir, Pakistani administration as having cut his family down the middle. In August 2019, he criticized the revocation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, tweeting: "Even from seven thousand miles away it's clear that what's happening in Kashmir is an atrocity. Not much to celebrate this August 15th." He has previously referred to Human rights abuses in Jammu and Kashmir, crackdowns in Indian-administered Kashmir as pretexts for the rise of Insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir, jihadism in the region:

The phrase of "crackdown" that the Indian army uses really is a euphemism of mass destruction. And Rape during the Kashmir conflict, rape. And brutalisation. That happens all the time. It's still happening now. ... The decision to treat all Kashmiris as if they're potential terrorists is what has unleashed this, the kind of "holocaust" against the Kashmiri people. And we know ourselves, from most recent events in Europe, how important it is to resist treating all Muslims as if they're terrorists, but the Indian army has taken the decision to do the opposite of that, to actually decide that everybody is a potential combatant to treat them in that way. And the level of brutality is quite spectacular. And, frankly, without that the jihadists would have had very little response from the Kashmiri people who were not really traditionally interested in radical Islam. So now they're caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, and that's the tragedy of the place. ... And really what I was trying to do was say exactly that the attraction of the jihad in Kashmir arose out of the activities of the Indian army.

Personal life

Rushdie has been married five times and has two children; his first four marriages ended in divorce. He was first married to Clarissa Luard,Descended from the gentry family LUARD, formerly of Byborough. See Burke's Landed Gentry 18th edn. vol. 1 (1965), p. 465, col. 2. literature officer of the Arts Council of England, from 1976 to 1987. The couple had a son, Zafar, born in 1979, who is married to the London-based jazz singer Natalie Coyle. He left Clarissa Luard in the mid-1980s for the Australian writer Robyn Davidson, to whom he was introduced by their mutual friend

. Rushdie and Davidson never married, and they had split up by the time his divorce from Clarissa came through in 1987. Rushdie's second wife was the American novelist Marianne Wiggins; they were married in 1988 and divorced in 1993. His third wife, from 1997 to 2004, was British editor and author Elizabeth West; they have a son, Milan, born in 1997. After a miscarriage, the couple ended their relationship in 2004. In 2004, very shortly after his third divorce, Rushdie married

, an Indian-born actress, model, television personality, producer, author, businessperson, and activist. At the time of their first meeting in 1999, Lakshmi was 28, while Rushdie was 51. Rushdie stated that Lakshmi had asked for a divorce in January 2007, and later that year, in July, the couple filed it. Padma Lakshmi criticized Rushdie as insecure and spoiled, stating he constantly craved praise and demanded "frequent sex." Rushdie derided her, calling her a "bad investment." Lakshmi also said that Rushdie was insensitive to her painful endometriosis. Following his split from Lakshmi, Rushdie was frequently seen with various women, including Riya Sen, journalist Aita Ighodaro, and actresses Olivia Wilde and Rosario Dawson, among others. In 2009, actress Pia Glenn castigated him as "cowardly, dysfunctional, and immature" after he ditched her via email. In 2021, Rushdie married American poet and novelist Rachel Eliza Griffiths. In 1999, Rushdie had an operation to correct ptosis (eyelid), ptosis, a problem with the levator palpebrae superioris muscle that causes drooping of the upper eyelid. According to Rushdie, this condition made it increasingly difficult for him to open his eyes. He said: "If I hadn't had an operation, in a couple of years from now I wouldn't have been able to open my eyes at all." Since 2000, Rushdie has lived in the United States, mostly near Union Square (New York City), Union Square in Lower Manhattan, New York City. He is a fan of the English Association football, football club Tottenham Hotspur. He has been a holder of the Person of Indian Origin Card, which grants certain rights to people of the Indian diaspora short of full citizenship.

Bibliography

Novels

*'' Grimus'' (1975) *''

'' (1981) *''

'' (1983) *'' The Satanic Verses'' (1988) *'' The Moor's Last Sigh'' (1995) *'' The Ground Beneath Her Feet'' (1999) *'' Fury'' (2001) *'' Shalimar the Clown'' (2005) *'' The Enchantress of Florence'' (2008) *'' Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights'' (2015) * '' The Golden House'' (2017) * '' Quichotte'' (2019) * '' Victory City'' (2023)

Collections

*'' East, West'' (1994) *''Mirrorwork: 50 Years of Indian Writing 1947–1997'' (1997, Editor, with Elizabeth West) *''The Best American Short Stories'' (2008, Guest Editor)

Children's books

*'' Haroun and the Sea of Stories'' (1990) *'' Luka and the Fire of Life'' (2010)

Essays and nonfiction

*''In Good Faith'', Granta Books (1990) *''Imaginary Homelands, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981–1991'' (1992) *''The Wizard of Oz: BFI Film Classics'', British Film Institute (1992) *''Mohandas Gandhi'', ''

'' (13 April 1998) *''Imagine There Is No Heaven'' (Extract from ''Letters to the Six Billionth World Citizen'', published in English by Uitgeverij Podium, Amsterdam) *''Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992–2002'' (2002) *''The East Is Blue'' (2004) *"A fine pickle", ''The Guardian'' (28 February 2009) *''In the South'', '' Booktrack'' (7 February 2012) *''Languages of Truth, Languages of Truth: Essays 2003–2020'' (2021)

Memoirs

*''The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey'' (1987) *'' Joseph Anton: A Memoir'' (2012) * '' Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder'' (2024)

Notes

References

Relevant literature

* Szpila, Grzegorz. "Paremic verses: Proverbial meanings in Salman Rushdie's novels." ''Journal of Literary Semantics'' 37.2(2008): 97–127. * Szpila, Grzegorz. "Paremic Allusions in Salman Rushdie's Novels." ''Proverbium'', 25 (2008), 379–398. * Szpila, Grzegorz. ''Idioms in Salman Rushdie's Novels. A PhraseoStylistic Approach''. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2012. 293 pp.

External links

* * *
Salman Rushdie
at ''The Encyclopedia of Fantasy''
Salman Rushdie
at ''The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction'' * *
Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library
Emory University
Salman Rushdie papers, 1947–2012
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rushdie, Salman Salman Rushdie, 1947 births Living people 20th-century British essayists 20th-century British male writers 20th-century British novelists 21st-century American essayists 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American memoirists 21st-century American novelists 21st-century atheists 21st-century British essayists 21st-century British male writers 21st-century British memoirists 21st-century British novelists 21st-century British screenwriters Alumni of King's College, Cambridge American critics of Islam American former Muslims American free speech activists American male essayists American male novelists American male writers of Indian descent American people of Kashmiri descent American stabbing survivors American writers with disabilities Best Screenplay Genie and Canadian Screen Award winners Booker Prize winners British atheism activists British atheists British Book Award winners British copywriters British critics of Islam British emigrants to the United States British feminist writers British former Muslims British free speech activists British humanists British male essayists British male feminists British male novelists British male short story writers British people of Kashmiri descent British stabbing survivors British writers of Indian descent British writers with disabilities Cathedral and John Connon School alumni Critics of Islamism Emory University faculty Eyepatch wearers Failed assassination attempts in the United States Fatwas Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Film producers from Mumbai Former Muslim critics of Islam Indian emigrants to England Iran–United Kingdom relations Iran's Book of the Year Awards recipients James Tait Black Memorial Prize recipients Kashmiri Muslims Knights Bachelor Magic realism writers Male actors from Mumbai Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom Naturalized citizens of the United States Novelists from Maharashtra People educated at Rugby School People with Overseas Citizenship of India Postcolonial literature Postmodern writers Screenwriters from Mumbai Survivors of terrorist attacks Victims of bomb threats Victims of Islamic terrorism