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Australian zookeeper, conservationist and TV personality (1962-2006)
Salman Rushdie is an acclaimed Indian-born British-American novelist known for blending magic realism with historical fiction. His novel “Midnight’s Children” won the Booker Prize, and his contentious work “The Satanic Verses” led to assassination attempts and a religious fatwa against him. Despite the controversy, Rushdie has received numerous honors for his contributions to literature.
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About the Salman Rushdie
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, typically set on the Indian subcontinent. Rushdie’s second novel, Midnight’s Children (1981), won the Booker Prize 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, including a fatwa calling for his death issued by Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran. In total, 20 countries banned the book. 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, a man stabbed Rushdie after rushing onto the stage where the novelist was scheduled to deliver a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York.
In 1983, Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was appointed a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in 1999. Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for his services to literature. In 2008, The Times 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 in 2015. Earlier, he taught at Emory University. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. 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 magazine in April 2023. Throughout his life, Rushdie has had five marriages, four of which ended in divorce.
Frequently Asked Questions
Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British-American novelist known for his works that often combine magic realism with historical fiction, exploring connections and disruptions between Eastern and Western civilizations.
Salman Rushdie’s second novel, ,Midnight’s Children,, won the Booker Prize in 1981 and has been deemed the ,best novel of all winners, on two occasions, marking the 25th and 40th anniversaries of the prize.
After publishing his novel ,The Satanic Verses, in 1988, Salman Rushdie became the subject of several assassination attempts and death threats, including a fatwa calling for his death issued by the supreme leader of Iran, Ruhollah Khomeini. The book was banned in 20 countries, and extremists have carried out killings and bombings citing the book as motivation.
Salman Rushdie has been elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, appointed a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France, and knighted in 2007 for his services to literature. He was also named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2023.
In 2022, a man stabbed Salman Rushdie after rushing onto the stage where the novelist was scheduled to deliver a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York.
Throughout his life, Salman Rushdie has had five marriages, four of which ended in divorce.
Since 2000, Salman 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 in 2015, and he previously taught at Emory University.
30 Quotes by Salman Rushdie
- 1.
One of the extraordinary things about human events is that the unthinkable becomes thinkable.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 2.
Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth’s marvels, beneath the dust of habit.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 3.
A poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 4.
It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 5.
Rock and roll music – the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative defense mechanisms.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 6.
Such is the miraculous nature of the future of exiles: what is first uttered in the impotence of an overheated apartment becomes the fate of nations.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 7.
What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 8.
What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 9.
Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 10.
I used to say, ‘There is a God-shaped hole in me.’ For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. Now I find it is the shape which has become more important.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 11.
When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 12.
The acceptance that all that is solid has melted into the air, that reality and morality are not givens but imperfect human constructs, is the point from which fiction begins.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 13.
Doubt, it seems to me, is the central condition of a human being in the twentieth century.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 14.
Our lives teach us who we are.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 15.
If Woody Allen were a Muslim, he’d be dead by now.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 16.
Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 17.
I hate admitting that my enemies have a point.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 18.
Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 19.
The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas – uncertainty, progress, change – into crimes.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 20.
I do not need the idea of God to explain the world I live in.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 21.
What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 22.
Our lives are not what we deserve; they are, let us agree, in many ways deficient.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 23.
A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 24.
In this world without quiet corners, there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, from terrible, unquiet fuss.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 25.
Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 26.
Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 27.
If I were asked for a one-sentence sound bite on religion, I would say I was against it.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 28.
Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 29.
Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
- 30.
Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts.
Salman RushdieIndian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)