'Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie' (
Devanagari : अख़à¥à¤®à¤¦ सलà¥à¤®à¤¾à¤¨ रशà¥à¤¦à¥€
Nastaliq:سلمان رشدی; born
19 June 1947) is a
British-
Indian novelist and essayist. He first achieved fame with his second novel, ''
Midnight's Children'' (1981), which won the
Booker Prize. Much of his early fiction is set at least partly on the
Indian subcontinent. His style is often classified as
magical realism, while a dominant theme of his work is the long, rich and often fraught story of the many connections, disruptions and migrations between
the East and
the West.
His fourth novel, ''
The Satanic Verses'' (1988), provoked
violent reactions from Muslims in several countries. Faced with death threats and a ''
fatwa'' (religious edict) issued by
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then
Supreme Leader of Iran, which called for him to be killed, he spent nearly a decade largely underground, appearing in public only sporadically. In June 2007, he was appointed a
Knight Bachelor for "services to literature"
[1], which "thrilled and humbled" him.
[2] The announcement met with disapproval from some Muslim nations and communities,
[3] with some claiming that it "may spark terrorism".
[2] In 2007, he began a five-year term as Distinguished Writer in Residence at
Emory University.
[ Salman Rushdie to Teach and Place His Archive at Emory University ]
Personal life
The only son of Anis Ahmed Rushdie, a
Cambridge University-educated lawyer turned businessman, and Negin Butt, a teacher, Rushdie was born into a
Muslim family in
Mumbai (then called
Bombay),
India. He was educated at
Cathedral and John Connon School in Mumbai,
Rugby School and
King's College, Cambridge, where he read
history. He worked for two advertising agencies (
Ogilvy & Mather and Ayer Barker) before becoming a full-time writer.
Rushdie has been married four times. His first wife was Clarissa Luard, to whom he was married from 1976 to 1987 and with whom he has a son, Zafar Rushdie. His 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 Elizabeth West; they have a son, Milan Rushdie. Since 2004, he has been married to the Indian actress and model
Padma Lakshmi, the host of the American reality-television show ''
Top Chef''. On July 2, 2007, it was announced that Rushdie and his wife would divorce, with Rushdie indicating that it was her desire to end the marriage.
In 1999, Rushdie had an operation to correct a tendon condition that was making it increasingly difficult for him to open his eyes. "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," he said.
[5]
Career
Major literary work
His first novel, ''
Grimus'' (1975), a part-
science fiction tale, was generally ignored by the book-buying public and literary critics. His next novel, ''
Midnight's Children'' (1981), however, catapulted him to literary fame. It also significantly shaped the course that
Indian writing in English would follow over the next decade. This work won the 1981
Booker Prize and, in 1993, was awarded the Booker of Bookers as the best novel to have received the prize during its first 25 years.
[6] It still receives accolades for being Rushdie's best, most flowing and inspiring work.
After the success of ''Midnight's Children'', about
the birth of the modern nation of India, Rushdie wrote ''
Shame'' (1983), in which he depicts the political turmoil in
Pakistan, basing his characters on
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and General
Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. ''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 are characterised by a style of
magic realism and the immigrant outlook of which Rushdie is very conscious, as a member of the
Indian diaspora.
In his later works, Rushdie turned towards the
Western world. In the 1980s, he visited
Nicaragua, the scene of
Sandinista political experiments, and this experience was the basis for his next book, ''
The Jaguar Smile'' (1987). He followed this with ''
The Moor's Last Sigh'' (1995), exploring commercial and cultural links between India and the
Iberian peninsula. ''
The Ground Beneath Her Feet'' (1999) presents an alternative history of modern
rock music, and Rushdie co-wrote
a song of the same name with
Bono.
Many of Rushdie's post-1989 works have been critically acclaimed and commercially successful. His 2005 novel ''
Shalimar the Clown'' received, in India, the prestigious Crossword Fiction Award, and was, in Britain, a finalist for the
Whitbread Book Awards. It is shortlisted for the 2007
International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
[7]
In his 2002 nonfiction collection ''Step Across the Line'', he professes his admiration for the Italian writer
Italo Calvino and the American writer
Thomas Pynchon, amongst others. His early influences included
James Joyce,
Günter Grass,
Jorge Luis Borges,
Mikhail Bulgakov, and
Lewis Carroll.
Other activities
Rushdie has mentored—though quietly—younger Indian (and ethnic-Indian) writers, influenced an entire generation of
Indo-Anglian writers, and is an influential writer in
postcolonial literature in general.
[8] He 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. He is also a fellow of the
Royal Society of Literature and ''Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres''. Rushdie was the President of
PEN American Center from 2004 to 2006.
He opposes 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 published by
Penguin in November 2005. Avowedly secular, Rushdie is a self-described
atheist. He is a distinguished supporter of the
British Humanist Association. On
April 21,
2007, Rushdie presented a literary reading of his latest work to the
Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy 30th birthday in
Boston. Asked later by
Michel Virard since when he had been a humanist, Rushdie replied that he had been one for long time without knowing the word for it, and that he had discovered the word only recently.
On
October 6,
2006, it was announced that Rushdie would be joining the
Emory University faculty as Distinguished Writer in Residence for one month a year for the next five years.
[9] He is currently working on a book set in the
Mughal Empire and
Renaissance Italy. Though he enjoys writing, Salman Rushdie says that he would have become an artist if his writing career was not successful. Even from early childhood, he drew pictures and sculpted long before he took an interest in writing.
Rushdie also engages in more popular forms of public discourse. For example, he gave a
cameo appearance in the film ''
Bridget Jones's Diary'' (2001) based on the
book of the same name, which is itself full of literary in-jokes. On
May 12,
2006, Rushdie was a guest host on ''
The Charlie Rose Show'', where he interviewed controversial
Indo-Canadian filmmaker
Deepa Mehta, whose work has also faced violent protests from religious traditionalists, about her 2005 film, ''
Water''.
''The Satanic Verses'' and the fatwa
''The Satanic Verses'' (1988), 2006 Vintage paperback edition
The publication of ''
The Satanic Verses'' in September 1988 caused immediate controversy in the
Islamic world because of what was perceived as an irreverent depiction of the prophet
Muhammad. The title refers to a
Muslim tradition that is related in the book. According to it, Muhammad (
Mahound in the book) added verses (''
sura'') to the
Qur'an accepting three goddesses that used to be worshipped in
Mecca 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 Gibreel. The
book was banned in many countries with large Muslim communities.
On
14 February 1989, a ''
fatwa'' requiring Rushdie's execution was proclaimed on Radio Tehran by
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the
spiritual leader of Iran at the time, calling the book "
blasphemous against Islam." A bounty was offered for the death of Rushdie, who was thus forced to live under police protection for years to come. On
7 March 1989, the United Kingdom and
Iran broke diplomatic relations over the Rushdie controversy.
The publication of the book and the ''fatwa'' sparked violence around the world, with bookstores being
firebombed. Muslim communities in several nations in the West held public rallies in which copies of the
book were burned. Several people associated with translating or publishing the book were attacked, seriously injured, and even killed.
[10] Many more people died in riots in
Third World countries.
On
24 September 1998, as a precondition to the restoration of
diplomatic relations with Britain, the Iranian government, then headed by moderate
Mohammad Khatami, gave a public commitment that it would "neither support nor hinder assassination operations on Rushdie."
[11][12]
Hardliners in Iran have, however, continued to reaffirm the death sentence.
[13] In early 2005, Khomeini's ''fatwa'' was reaffirmed by Iran's spiritual leader,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a message to Muslim pilgrims making the
annual pilgrimage to
Mecca.
[14] Additionally, the
Revolutionary Guards have declared that the death sentence on him is still valid.
[15] Iran has rejected requests to withdraw the ''fatwa'' on the basis that only the person who issued it may withdraw it
, and the person who issued it is dead.
Salman Rushdie reported that he still receives a "sort of
Valentine's card" from Iran each year on
February 14 letting him know the country has not forgotten the vow to kill him.
He was also quoted saying, "It's reached the point where it's a piece of rhetoric rather than a real threat."
[16] Despite the threats on Rushdie, he has publicly 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.
[17]
Hezbollah's failed assassination attempt
A 1989 explosion in Britain is believed to have been a
Hezbollah "attempt to assassinate British novelist Salman Rushdie [which] failed when a bomb exploded prematurely, killing a terrorist in London."
[18] There is a shrine in Tehran's
Behesht-e Zahra cemetery for Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh that says he was "Martyred in London, August 3, 1989. The first martyr to die on a mission to kill Salman Rushdie." Mazeh died priming a book bomb loaded with
RDX explosives that took out two floors of a hotel in
Paddington,
Central London. A previously unknown
Lebanese group, the Organisation of the Mujahidin of Islam, said he died preparing an attack "on the
apostate Rushdie". Mezeh'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.
During the 2006
Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, Hezbollah leader
Hassan Nasrallah 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."
[19]
''International Guerillas''
In 1990, a
Pakistani film was released in which Rushdie, played by
Afzaal Ahmad, was depicted as plotting, soon after his publication of ''The Satanic Verses'', to cause the downfall of "Pakistan, the stronghold of Islam" by opening a chain of casinos and discos in the country. The hero of the story, played by
Mustafa Qureshi, learns of the plot and decides to quit his day job as a police officer to recruit his unemployed brothers and create a ''
mujahid'' (God's soldiers) group to pursue Rushdie and slay him before the plot can go into effect.
[20][21] The film was popular with Pakistani audiences, and it "presents Rushdie as a
Rambo-like figure pursued by four Pakistani guerillas"
[22] and surrounded by the Israeli armed forces.
[23] Rushdie is portrayed as "a smug, bespectacled butcher in a double-breasted suit, who lives in palatial splendor, [and who] personally slaughters his enemies with a huge blood-soaked sword".
[24] In the end, as the trio of brothers and their mother are being crucified by Rushdie, Allah frees them with bolts of lightning and "Rushdie is attacked by a quartet of floating holy books (the
Koran,
Tawrat,
Zabur, and
Injil), which shoot laser beams into his skull until he bursts into flame"
, "a scene that evoked shouts of approval from [Pakistani] audiences."
The
British Board of Film Classification refused to allow it a certificate, as "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 move effectively banned the film in Britain outright. However, two months later, 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 was 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 massive hit in Pakistan, it went virtually unnoticed in the UK.
Knighthood
Main articles: Knighthood of Salman Rushdie
Rushdie was awarded a
knighthood for services to literature in the
Queen's Birthday Honours on
June 16,
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."
[25] 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. Mass demonstrations against the honour took place in Pakistan and Malaysia. Calls for his death were issued by several groups outraged by the honour.
According to a recent report by the
BBC,
Al-Qaeda have also condemned the Rushdie honour. The Al-Qaeda deputy
Ayman al-Zawahiri is quoted as saying in an audio recording that Britain's award for Indian-born Salman was "an insult to
Islam", and it was planning "a very precise response."
[26]
Religious and political beliefs
Rushdie was raised a Muslim but is reviled as an
apostate in Muslim countries, especially Pakistan. His books often focus on the role of religion in society and conflicts between faiths and between the religious and those of no faith.
Rushdie advocates the application of
higher criticism, pioneered during the late
19th century. Rushdie calls for a reform in Islam
[1] in a guest opinion piece printed in ''
The Washington Times'' and ''
The Times'' in mid-August
2005. Excerpts from his speech:
Rushdie supported the
1999 NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to stop the ethnic cleansing in
Kosovo, leading the leftist
Tariq Ali to label Rushdie and other "warrior writers" as "the belligerati'".
[27]
In 2006, Rushdie stated that he supported comments by the
Leader of the House of Commons,
Jack Straw,
criticising 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."
[28]
Bibliography
★ ''
Grimus'' (1975)
★ ''
Midnight's Children'' (1981)
★ ''
Shame'' (1983)
★ '' (1987)
★ ''
The Satanic Verses'' (1988)
★ ''
Haroun and the Sea of Stories'' (1990)
★ ''
Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981 - 1991'' (1992)
★ ''Homeless by Choice'' (
1992, with R. Jhabvala and
V. S. Naipaul)
★ ''
East, West'' (1994)
★ ''
The Moor's Last Sigh'' (1995)
★ ''
The Ground Beneath Her Feet'' (1999)
★ ''
Fury'' (2001)
★ '' (2002)
★ ''
Shalimar the Clown'' (2005)
Awards
★
Aristeion Prize (
European Union)
★
Arts Council Writers' Award
★ Author of the Year (
British Book Awards)
★ Author of the Year (Germany)
★
Booker of Bookers or the best novel among the Booker Prize winners for Fiction
★
Booker Prize for Fiction
★
English-Speaking Union Award
★ Hutch Crossword Fiction Prize (India)
★ India Abroad Lifetime Achievement Award (USA)
★
James Tait Black Memorial Prize (Fiction)
★ Kurt Tucholsky Prize (Sweden)
★ Mantua Prize (Italy)
★ Outstanding Lifetime Achievement in Cultural Humanism (Harvard University)
★ Premio
Grinzane Cavour (Italy)
★ Prix Colette (Switzerland)
★
Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger
★ State Prize for Literature (Austria)
★
Whitbread Novel Award (twice)
★
Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award for Children's Fiction
See also
★ A critique of ''The Satanic Verses'', by
Ata'ollah Mohajerani, former Iranian Minister of Culture
★ Norwegian author
Axel Jensen and his collection of essays, ''God Does Not Read Novels: A Voyage in the World of Salman Rushdie'' (1994), in defence of free speech
★
Censorship in South Asia
★
International PEN
★ —an
open letter he co-signed regarding the
Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy
★
Blitcon, British literary conservatives
References
1. The UK Honours System - Queen's birthday list 2007
2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6763119.stm
3. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6760927.stm
4. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6763119.stm
5. "Rushdie: New book out from under shadow of fatwa", CNN, April 15, 1999. Retrieved on April 21, 2007.
6. Previous winners - 1981
7. The 2007 Shortlist
8. Rushdie's postcolonial influence
9. Salman Rushdie to Teach and Place His Archive at Emory University
10. See Hitoshi Igarashi, Ettore Capriolo, William Nygaard
11. Tomb of the unknown assassin reveals mission to kill Rushdie
12. 26 December 1990: Iranian leader upholds Rushdie fatwa
13. Can Iran Be Trusted? Rubin, Michael
14. Ayatollah revives the death fatwa on Salman Rushdie Webster, Philip, Ben Hoyle and Ramita Navai
15. Iran adamant over Rushdie fatwa
16. Rushdie's term
17. Cronenberg meets Rushdie
18. Hezbollah’s Terrorist Threat to the European Union - Testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Europe James Phillips
19. Hezbollah: Rushdie death would stop Prophet insults
20. Imdb - Plot summary for International Gorillay (1990) Sujit R. Varma
21. Imdb - International Gorillay (1990)
22. The Resilience of Conservative Religion: The Case of Popular, Conservative Protestant Congregations, Joseph Bernard Tamney, , , The Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, ,
23. International Guerrillas and Criminal Libel
24. INTERNATIONAL GUERRILLAS [International Gorillay] (1990)
25. June 15th 2007 Rushdie knighted in honours list
26. July 10th 2007 Al-Qaeda condemns Rushdie honour
27. Michael Mandel, ''How America Gets Away With Murder'', Pluto Press, 2004, p60
28. Blair, Rushdie support former British foreign secretary who ignited veil debate Wagner, Thomas
External links
★
Contemporary writers: Salman Rushdie. British Council: Arts. Retrieved December 17, 2006.
★
The Rushdie Experiment conducted in Tehran, Iran, in October/November 2006 to see if he has outlasted public hatred of him
★
Long interview with Rushdie in which he provides context for the ''fatwa'' and reflects on the rise of Islamic fundamentalism
★
Interview with Rushdie for Princeton Report on Knowledge about storytelling, freedom of expression and the 2004 US presidential election.
★
Rushdie to teach at Emory
★
''New York Times'' special feature on Rushdie, 1999
★
The Rushdie death threat affair
★
Rushdie timeline
★
Summaries of all his novels and links to interviews with Rushdie
★
A critique of Salman Rushdie (2006) in Al-Ahram by
Hamid Dabashi
★
The Irshad Manji interview with Salman Rushdie
★
February 14, 2006, Iran says Rushdie ''fatwa'' still stands.
★
Profile: Salman Rushdie
★
Salman Rushdie interviewed by Ginny Dougary (2005)
★
Salman Rushdie Bookweb on literary website The Ledge, with suggestions for further reading.
★
Salman Rushdie's speech at the Center for Inquiry, presented on the Point of Inquiry Podcast
Interviews
★
Video interview with Stephen Colbert May 9,
2007
★
Video interview and clips of Bill Moyers conversation with Rushdie in 2006 on PBS
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