Rushdie, Salman << RUHSH dee or ROOSH dee, SAHL man >> (1947-…), is a noted novelist from India. Rushdie has gained praise for his skill as a storyteller and for his imaginative style, which often features fantasy and high-spirited humor. His major themes include homelessness, exile, and the redefinition of identity.
Rushdie became the center of an international controversy with the publication in 1988 of The Satanic Verses. The novel plays upon the legend that Satan inserted certain verses into the revelation of the Qur’ān, the sacred book of Islam. The prophet Muhammad later rejected the verses after an angel revealed they were fake. Many Islamic leaders denounced the novel as blasphemy. In 1989, Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, pronounced a fatwa (death sentence) on Rushdie. Fearing assassination, the writer went into hiding during the 1990’s. The British government awarded Rushdie a knighthood in 2008, angering several Muslim countries.
Rushdie first won literary recognition with Midnight’s Children (1981), his second novel. It is a panoramic account of the history of India since the country’s independence from the United Kingdom in 1947. In the novel, actual historical figures mingle with deities and bizarre fictional human characters. The novel is an example of magic realism, a narrative style that combines detailed realism with grotesque and fantastic elements to achieve a dreamlike quality. It won the 1981 Booker Prize, the United Kingdom’s highest literary award. Shame (1983), Rushdie’s next novel, is set in an imaginary country that resembles Pakistan. It shuttles between memory and prophecy and between the past and the future to demonstrate how the forces of history and culture can distort human relationships.
In the 1990’s, Rushdie wrote most of his books in hiding. They included the short story collection East, West (1994) and the novels Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990) and The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995).
Rushdie came out of hiding and settled in the United States in 2000. He wrote Fury (2001), a satirical comic novel set in New York City. In Shalimar the Clown (2005), Rushdie explored the roots of terrorism and ethnic and religious violence. The Enchantress of Florence (2008) is about a traveler from Italy who visits the great Mughal emperor Akbar in India during the late 1500’s. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights (2015) is a satirical fantasy inspired by the Arabic collection of tales called The Arabian Nights. In Quichotte (2019), Rushdie reimagined the Spanish story of Don Quixote in a modern American setting with magical overtones. Victory City (2023) is about a girl in medieval India chosen as the human instrument for the will of a goddess.
Rushdie’s Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002 was published in 2002. Languages of Truth: Essays 2003-2020 was published in 2021.
Ahmed Salman Rushdie was born on June 19, 1947, in Bombay (now Mumbai), India. He wrote a memoir of his life in hiding, Joseph Anton (2012). In August 2022, Rushdie was seriously injured by a man who rushed onstage and attacked him as the author was about to give a lecture in Chautauqua, New York.
