Salman Rushdie

British Indian satirist and magical realist novelist

• Born: June 19, 1947
• Place of Birth: Bombay (now Mumbai), India

Biography

Ahmed Salman Rushdie may be the most famous novelist of the Indian diaspora, though for some unfortunate reasons. Born into an affluent Muslim family in India, Rushdie began his education in 1954 at Bombay’s Cathedral School. His family sent him to Rugby, one of England’s finest boys’ schools, when he was thirteen. In 1964, his family moved to Karachi, Pakistan, where Rushdie spent his school vacations. From 1965 to 1968, he attended King’s College at Cambridge University, where he read history with an emphasis on Islamic religion and culture. After graduation, he returned to Karachi and worked briefly for Pakistani television. Within a year he had returned to England because of political difficulties, including conflict over his television production of Edward Albee’s play The Zoo Story, which had been censored due to the play’s references to pork.

In London from 1968 to 1970, Rushdie tried to become a professional actor at the experimental Oval House theater. He worked sporadically as an advertising copywriter from 1969 to 1981. Through the 1970s, he wrote fiction on the side, but his first novel, Grimus (1975), sold badly and was poorly received by critics. Rushdie visited Pakistan and India for five months in 1974 in preparation for writing his second novel, Midnight’s Children (1981). Following that novel’s publication, his literary fortunes changed. He became a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1983.

Rushdie is a humorous but deeply serious writer who often takes generous liberties with the excesses of all forms of authoritarianism. Not an easy novelist to read, he demands considerable intelligence of his readers and a capacity to follow enormously complicated labyrinths of mischievous improvisation. As a literary form, the novel can be digressive, unstructured, and parodic; it can also be mockingly satiric, salacious, pornographic, and spiritedly tasteless. Midnight’s Children is all these things, a collection of social, religious, political, and psychological commentary, loosely glued together by the wild idea that at the midnight hour on the first day of Indian independence from Great Britain (August 14, 1947), 1,001 children were born in India with unusual gifts, ranging from intense beauty to the ability to change sex to the narrator’s own ability to communicate with other children in his head. This blending of history and fantasy in the tradition of magical realism earned Rushdie the 1981 Booker Prize, Britain’s highest award for fiction.

Similar to Midnight’s Children in theme and style, Rushdie’s next book, Shame (1983), was also received with critical enthusiasm and nominated for the Booker Prize. When he did not win the prize, he astounded the audience at the award ceremony by publicly protesting his loss. (The novel did win the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger.) In 1986, he was invited to Nicaragua as a guest of the Sandinista Association of Cultural Workers; afterward, he wrote the extended journalistic book The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey (1987), which severely criticized US president Ronald Reagan’s policies in Nicaragua, particularly his role in helping to arm the counterrevolutionary Contra army.

Rushdie’s work, however, did not really come to public attention until 1989, shortly after the September 26, 1988, publication of The Satanic Verses, just in time to be nominated for the Booker Prize. Although the novel did not win the award, it was favorably reviewed. From the beginning, however, the book’s references to religion and Rushdie’s depiction of the Muslim prophet Muhammad caused unrest in England’s large immigrant Muslim community. Sale of the book was banned in India on October 5 and in South Africa on October 24. Within weeks, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab states had joined the ban.

By early 1989, the situation had exploded into worldwide controversy. A group of Muslims burned a copy of the book as a public protest on January 14, 1989, in Bradford, England, a town with a large Pakistani population. On February 12, a riot erupted at the US embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, protesting the set February 15 publication date for the American edition. Police defending the embassy killed five people and injured more than a hundred others. On the following day, similar riots broke out in Kashmir, leaving another person dead and a hundred more injured. The Ayatollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of Iran, proclaimed a fatwa, or legal judgment, ordering Rushdie’s execution, offering a reward of $1 million or more depending on the executioner’s nationality.

In response to the clamor and support for the fatwa from fundamentalist Muslims throughout the world, Rushdie went into hiding in England on February 14, 1989; he would later receive protection from Scotland Yard. Diplomatic relations between Iran and countries that protested Khomeini’s threat were seriously disrupted and, in some cases, severed. Although extremist Muslims burned copies of The Satanic Verses, attacked shops where it was sold, and wounded its Norwegian publisher, the novel became a best seller and remained in print. Despite Rushdie’s publication of an apology confirming his respect for Islam, the fatwa remained in effect, and the harassment continued.

During his time in hiding, Rushdie continued publishing stories, essays, interviews, reviews, the children's book Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990) and novels, including The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995). This novel angered ultranationalist Hindus, and the Shiv Sena, an extremist right-wing political party in India, called for a ban on importation of the book. Although not optimistic about diplomatic negotiations to lift the fatwa, Rushdie began making public appearances in early 1996 to publicize his new novel, attending lectures and book signings in England, South America, and Australia.

The Iranian government stepped back from the fatwa in 1998 (but did not lift it), and Rushdie soon decided to come out of hiding altogether. That same year, a stage adaptation of Haroun, by Tim Supple and David Tushingham, premiered. In 1999, he published the novel The Ground beneath Her Feet, which combines elements of mythology and science fiction in a retelling of the Oedipus myth, set in the world of hedonistic rock stars. He also adapted Midnight's Children for the screen. Rushdie moved from London to New York City in early 2000; soon after this relocation, he published the novel Fury (2001), in which a former Cambridge professor abandons his family for fear that he is a danger to them and tries to find a new life in New York City.

In 2003, responding to a question about what life was like following the fatwa, Rushdie commented that he “had this sense that there were all these lines people were telling me not to cross. . . . And the only way to do it was to step across it. . . . I had to do that for a long time and eventually got back here.” This metaphor for his experience provided the title for his 2002 essay collection, Step across This Line.

Rushdie's subsequent books included Shalimar the Clown (2005), about a spurned lover who becomes a jihadist in order to take revenge on the US diplomat who impregnated the woman he loved, and The Enchantress of Florence (2008), which is set during the Renaissance and follows a European man who claims to be a long-lost relative of the sixteenth-century Mughal emperor Akbar. Rushdie's second children's book, Luka and the Fire of Life (2010), addresses globalization, community, and individual agency through the protagonist's online gaming. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights (2015), which interweaves stories about a twelfth-century philosopher and a djinn, a twenty-first-century gardener, and a thirty-first century narrator, became a best seller.

In 2012, Rushdie published Joseph Anton: A Memoir, a third-person account of his life while under the fatwa. He refers to himself throughout the memoir as Joseph Anton, the pseudonym he used while in hiding, conceived as a tribute to authors Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov.

Rushdie's next work was The Golden House, a 2017 novel that ultimately polarized critics. Rushdie then published Quichotte, a 2019 novel inspired by Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote. Quichotte was praised by critics, and it was later shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize. In 2023, he published the novel Victory City, a fictionalized take on an ancient Sanskrit epic.

In 2022, during a public appearance at the Chautauqua Institution, in Chautauqua, New York, Rushdie was attacked on stage by a man with a knife. Rushdie, who was repeatedly stabbed by the attacker, sustained critical injuries and was flown by helicopter to a nearby hospital. Rushdie's agent later said that the author underwent extensive surgery to repair damage to his neck, liver, leg, hand, and eye. After initially being put on a ventilator, Rushdie soon regained consciousness and was able to speak a few days after the attack. Although many linked the attack to the ongoing fatwa, Iran denied any involvement in the event. The person accused of attacking him, Hadi Matar, pleaded guilty and was denied bail at a court appearance not long after the incident. The US government ultimately issued sanctions against the 15 Khordad Foundation, an Iranian organization that placed a bounty on Rushdie’s life. Rushdie's agent later reported that, because of the wounds inflicted, he had lost sight in one of his eyes and one of his hands had become essentially incapacitated. His 2024 memoir recounting the attack and its impact, Knife: Meditations after an Attempted Murder, was a finalist for the National Book Award's nonfiction category.

Among the many awards that Rushdie has won, in addition to the Booker Prize for Midnight’s Children, are the “Booker of Bookers” Award “Best of the Booker” Prize for the best novel to have won the prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Whitbread Prize, and the Writers’ Guild Award. He later received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award, PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award from PEN America, and Chicago Tribune Literary Award. He has also been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Royal Society of Literature; appointed commander of l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (the Order of Arts and Letters); and made a knight bachelor of the British Empire. Rushdie was a university distinguished professor at Emory College in Atlanta, Georgia, from 2011 to 2015. He served as an artist in residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, and in 2022 he was named a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour.

Personal Life

In 1976, Rushdie married English press officer and literary agent Clarissa Luard, with whom he had a son. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1987. He married the American novelist Marianne Wiggins the following year; they divorced in 1993.

In 1997, Rushdie married Elizabeth West, with whom he had a second son. In early 2000, after falling in love with model and actor Padma Lakshmi, he left West and moved to New York City. He officially divorced West in 2004 and married Lakshmi the same year. Rushdie and Lakshmi divorced in 2007. He married American author Rachel Eliza Griffiths in 2021.

Author Works

Long Fiction:

Grimus, 1975

Midnight’s Children, 1981

Shame, 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, 2012

Quichotte, 2019

Victory City, 2023

Short Fiction:

East, West: Stories, 1994

Nonfiction:

The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey, 1987

Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991, 1991

The Wizard of Oz: A Short Text about Magic, 1992

Conversations with Salman Rushdie, 2000 (Michael Reder, editor)

Step across This Line: Collected Nonfiction, 1992-2002, 2002

Joseph Anton: A Memoir, 2012

Knife: Meditations after an Attempted Murder, 2024

Children's/Young Adult Literature:

Haroun and the Sea of Stories, 1990 (fable)

Luka and the Fire of Life, 2010

Edited Text:

The Vintage Book of Indian Writing, 1947–1997, 1997 (with Elizabeth West, pub. in US as Mirrorwork: 50 Years of Indian Writing, 1947–1997)

Best American Short Stories 2008, 2008

Screenplay:

The Riddle of Midnight: India, August 1987, 1988

The Screenplay of Midnight's Children, 1999

Drama:

Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, 2003 (with Simon Reade and Tim Supple)

Bibliography

Afzal-Khan, Fawzia. Cultural Imperialism and the Indo-English Novel: Genre and Ideology in R. K. Narayan, Anita Desai, Kamala Markandaya, and Salman Rushdie. University Park: Pennyslvania State UP, 1993. Print.

Ahsan, A. R. Sacrilege versus Civility: Muslim Perspectives on the Satanic Verses Affair. Markfield: Islamic Foundation, 1993. Print.

Appignanesi, Lisa, and Sara Maitland, eds. The Rushdie File. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1990. Print. Surveys critical reaction to The Satanic Verses.

Blinken, Antony J. “Sanctioning the Iranian Entity Responsible for a Bounty on Salman Rushdie." US Department of State, 28 Oct. 2022, www.state.gov/sanctioning-the-iranian-entity-responsible-for-a-bounty-on-salman-rushdie/. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.

Brennan, Timothy. Salman Rushdie and the Third World: Myths of the Nation. London: Macmillan, 1989. Print.

Chauhan, Pradyumna S., ed. Salman Rushdie Interviews: A Sourcebook of His Ideas. Westport: Greenwood, 2001. Print.

Cundy, Catherine. Salman Rushdie: Contemporary World Writers. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1996. Print.

Fletcher, M. D., ed. Reading Rushdie: Perspectives on the Fiction of Salman Rushdie. Amsterdam: Cross/Cultures, 1994. Print.

Goonetilleke, D. C. R. A. Salman Rushdie. 2nd ed. New York: Palgrave, 2010. Print.

Gurnah, Abdulrazak, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Salman Rushdie. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print.

Hamilton, Ian. “The First Life of Salman Rushdie.” New Yorker 25 Dec. 1995: 89–113. Print.

Harrison, James. Salman Rushdie. New York: Twayne, 1992. Print.

Hassumani, Sabrina. Salman Rushdie: A Postmodern Reading of His Major Works. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2002. Print.

Hitchens, Christopher. “Holy Writ.” Atlantic Monthly Apr. 2003: 93–101. Print.

Lea, Richard. "The Satanic Verses: The Sentence Goes On." Guardian, 14 Feb. 2014, www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/feb/14/satanic-verses-sentence-fatwa-free-speech-writers. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.

MacDonogh, Steve, ed. The Rushdie Letters: Freedom to Speak, Freedom to Write. Dingle: Brandon, 1993. Print.

Mortimer, Edward. “Satanic Verses: The Aftermath.” New York Times Book Review 22 July 22 1990: 3+. Print.

Parameswarn, U. The Perforated Sheet: Essays on Salman Rushdie’s Art. New Delhi: Affiliated East-West, 1988. Print.

Pipes, Daniel. The Rushdie Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West. New York: Birch Lane, 1990. Print.

Root, Jay, et al. "Salman Rushdie on Ventilator Hours after Being Stabbed in Western New York." The New York Times, 12 Aug. 2022, www.nytimes.com/live/2022/08/12/nyregion/salman-rushdie-stabbed-new-york. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.

Rushdie, Salman. Joseph Anton: A Memoir. New York: Random, 2012. Print.

Taneja, G. R., and R. K. Dhawan, eds. The Novels of Salman Rushdie. New Delhi: Indian Soc. for Commonwealth Studies, 1992. Print.

Weatherby, W. J. Salman Rushdie: Sentenced to Death. New York: Carroll, 1990. Print.