Salman Rushdie
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (Kashmiri: अहमद सलमान रुशदी, احمد سلمان رشدی ; /sælˈmɑːn ˈrʊʃdi/; born 19 June 1947) is a British Indian novelist and essayist. His second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981. Much of his fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent. He is said to combine magical realism with historical fiction; his work is concerned with the many connections, disruptions and migrations between East and West.
His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), was the centre of a major controversy, provoking protests from Muslims in several countries, some violent. Death threats were made against him, including a fatwā issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, on 14 February 1989.
Rushdie was appointed Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in January 1999. In June 2007, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him for his services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked him thirteenth on its list of the fifty greatest British writers since 1945.
Since 2000, Rushdie has lived in the United States, where he has worked at Emory University and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His most recent book is Joseph Anton: A Memoir, an account of his life in the wake of the controversy over The Satanic Verses.
Read more about Salman Rushdie: Early Life and Family Background, The Satanic Verses and The fatwā, Knighthood, Religious and Political Beliefs, Personal Life, Awards
Famous quotes by salman rushdie:
“Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers; to be, for a secular, materialist culture, some sort of replacement for what the love of god offers in the world of faith.”
—Salman Rushdie (b. 1947)
“In this world without quiet corners, there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, from terrible, unquiet fuss.”
—Salman Rushdie (b. 1947)
“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 Rushdie (b. 1948)
“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 Rushdie (b. 1947)
“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 Rushdie (b. 1948)