Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie, (1947- ). British novelist, born in Bombay. Rushdie was educated in Britain, at Rugby School and Cambridge University. After some years working in advertising, he published the novel Grimus in 1974. Fame arrived in 1981, when his second novel Midnight’s Children won the Booker Prize and became a bestseller. The book uses a combination of fantasy, satire, and realism to explore the post-independence history of India. Shame (1983) takes a similar approach to modern Pakistan. Unhappily, Rushdie is now best known for the international controversy that developed following the publication of The Satanic Verses in 1988. Claims that the novel, a complex fantasy about the experience of Muslims in the West, blasphemed against Islam led to violent demonstrations in several countries. In February 1988 the Iranian religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa sentencing Rushdie to death; the author has been obliged to live in hiding under police protection ever since. The Rushdie affair has provoked intense debate about the clash between Islam and Western liberal values. His subsequent publications include Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990) and The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995). In the mid 1990s Rushdie slowly began to adopt a more public profile.
