Salman Rushdie

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Salman Rushdie.
Salman Rushdie
Born:	June 19, 1947 Mumbai, India
Occupation:	Author
Genres:	Magic Realism
Influences:	Gunter Grass, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Vladimir Nabokov

Salman Rushdie (Urdu: سلمان رشدی, Hindi: सलमान रश्दी) (born Ahmed Salman Rushdie, on June 19, 1947, in Bombay, India) is a British-Indian essayist and fiction author. He first achieved fame with his second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), which won the prestigious Booker Prize. Most of his fiction is set on the subcontinent of India.

Rushdie is best known for the violent reactions that his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), provoked amongst the Muslim world community. After death threats and a fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini, calling for his assassination, he spent years underground, appearing in public only sporadically.

Rushdie is currently a writer in residence at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States.

Contents 1 Personal life 2 Career 3 The Satanic Verses controversy 4 October 2006 Jack Straw veil controversy 5 Salman Rushdie in popular culture 6 List of published works 7 Awards 8 References 9 See also 10 External links 10.1 Video

[edit] Personal life

Rushdie was born into a secularized Muslim family in Mumbai. When he was 17, his parents settled in Pakistan. He was educated at Cathedral and John Connon School in Bombay and Rugby School in Warwickshire, England. He attended King's College at Cambridge in England. Following an advertising career with the firms Ogilvy & Mather and Ayer Barker, he became a full-time writer. Rushdie is married to actress Padma Lakshmi, his fourth wife.

[edit] Career

His first novel, Grimus, a part-science fiction tale, was generally ignored by the book-buying public and literary critics. His next novel, Midnight's Children, however, catapulted him to literary fame and is often considered his best work to date. It also significantly shaped the course that Indian writing in English would follow over the next decade. This work won the Booker Prize (1981) and was later awarded the 'Booker of Bookers' prize in 1993 — that is, it was selected as the best novel to be awarded the Booker Prize in its first 25 years. After the success of Midnight's Children, Rushdie wrote a short novel, Shame, in which he depicts the political turmoil in Pakistan by basing his characters on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Both of these works are characterised by a style of magic realism and the immigrant outlook of which Rushdie is very conscious. In the 1980s, Rushdie visited Nicaragua, the scene of Sandinista political experiments, and this experience was the basis for his next book, The Jaguar Smile.

In his nonfiction collection Step Across the Line, he professes his admiration for the Italian writer Italo Calvino, the Indian writer Arundhati Roy, and the American writer Thomas Pynchon, amongst others. His early influences included James Joyce, Günter Grass, Jorge Luis Borges, Mikhail Bulgakov and Lewis Carroll.

India and Pakistan were the themes of Midnight's Children and Shame, respectively. In his later works, Rushdie turned towards the Western world with The Moor's Last Sigh, exploring commercial and cultural links between India and the Iberian peninsula, and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, which presents an alternative history of modern rock music. Midnight's Children receives accolades for being Rushdie's best, most flowing and inspiring work, and many of Rushdie's post-1989 works have been critically acclaimed and commercially successful.His newest book, Shalimar the Clown, released in September 2005, was a finalist for the Whitbread Book Awards.

Rushdie has also long mentored — though quietly — younger Indian (and ethnic-Indian) writers, and has influenced an entire generation of 'Indo-Anglian' writers, and has had a hand in shaping (and re-shaping) post-colonial literature in general^{[citation needed]}. He has received many plaudits for his writings including the European Union's Aristeion Prize for Literature. 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 2004-2006.

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. According to critic of Islam Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Rushdie expressed his optimism that she had gone from supporting the fatwa against him, to speaking out in opposition to everything that it stands for, because "hopefully other Muslims will follow the same path".^[1]

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.^[2]He is currently working on a book set in the Mughal Empire.

[edit] The Satanic Verses controversy

The publication of The Satanic Verses in September 1988 caused immediate controversy in the Islamic world due to 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 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). 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 in hiding for years to come. The British police gave Rushdie a new identity. On 7 March 1989, the United Kingdom and Iran broke diplomatic relations over the Rushdie controversy.

Meanwhile, further violence occurred around the world, with the firebombing of bookstores. Muslim communities throughout the world held public rallies in which copies of the book were burned. Several people associated with translating or publishing the book were attacked and seriously injured or killed. In late 1990, Rushdie apologised to Muslims and even formally converted to Islam,^[3] but recanted a short time later describing it as the "biggest mistake of my life" in an interview he gave to Anne McElvoy of The Times published on August 26, 1995.

On 24 September 1998, as a precondition to the restoration of diplomatic relations with Britain, Iran gave a public commitment that it would do nothing to harm Rushdie.^[4] But soon after restoration of diplomatic relations, Iranian authorities reversed themselves and reaffirmed the death threats.^[5] 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.^[6] Additionally, the Revolutionary Guards have declared that the death sentence on him is still valid.^[7] Iran has rejected requests to withdraw the fatwa on the basis that only the person who issued it may withdraw it.^[6]

Salman Rushdie, at Atlanta, said 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."^[8]

See The Satanic Verses for a timeline of the events.

[edit] October 2006 Jack Straw veil controversy

In 2006, Rushdie stated that he supported comments by the Leader of the House of Commons, Jack Straw, criticising the wearing of the niqab. Rushdie stated that his three sisters would never wear the veil, that it was a limitation on women. 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."^[9]

[edit] Salman Rushdie in popular culture

• Bridget Jones's Diary (2001): A cameo as himself, particularly memorable as both Hugh Grant and Renée Zellweger ask him for directions to the lavatory.
• The Rutles 2 (2005): Rushdie appears several times throughout the film as one of the celebrity commentators on the career and musical output of The Rutles.
• On May 12, 2006, Rushdie was a guest host on The Charlie Rose Show, where he interviewed filmmaker Deepa Mehta about her 2005 film, Water.
• Rushdie and Bono co-wrote the song "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" for the book of the same name; the song was later recorded by U2 for the soundtrack to the film The Million Dollar Hotel.
• Rushdie is a character in a 1990 film entitled International Gorillay (International Guerillas) produced in Pakistan. This film made headlines when the British censors refused to allow it a certificate thus officially banning the film outright. However a month later, following a letter by Salman Rushdie himself, the ban was lifted [3]
• Several airlines, including Continental Airlines in the United States, refuse to carry Rushdie on any of their commercial flights. The fatwa placed on his life is considered to be a security risk.
• In a episode of Seinfeld, Kramer believes that he had seen Rushdie at a health club.

[edit] List of published works

• Grimus (1975)
• Midnight's Children (1981)
• Shame (1983)
• The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey (1987)
• The Satanic Verses (1988)
• Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990)
• Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981–1991 (1992)
• East, West (1994)
• The Moor's Last Sigh (1995)
• The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999)
• Fury (2001)
• Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992–2002 (2002)
• The East is Blue (essay, 2004)
• Shalimar the Clown (2005)

[edit] Awards

Awards that Rushdie has won include the following:

• Booker Prize for Fiction
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize (Fiction)
• Arts Council Writers' Award
• English-Speaking Union Award
• Booker of Bookers or the best novel among the Booker Prize winners for Fiction
• Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger
• Whitbread Novel Award
• Writers' Guild Award (Children's Book)

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• A critique on the machination of The Satanic Verses, by Ata'ollah Mohajerani
• A critique on the fatwa and a defense of the freedom of speech, by Norwegian author Axel Jensen
• Censorship in South Asia
• International PEN
• MANIFESTO: Together facing the new totalitarianism (A letter he co-signed published in response to violent and deadly protests in the Islamic world surrounding the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.)
• Blitcon

[edit] 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
• Salman Rushdie at www.contemporarywriters.com/

• 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
• Rushdie: Haunted by his unholy ghosts by Arshad Ahmadi (book complete text)

[edit] Video

• Full Interview and Clips of Bill Moyers Conversation with Rushdie in 2006 on PBS

Persondata
NAME	Rushdie., Salman
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Rushdie, Ahmed Salman; سلمان رشدی (Urdu)
SHORT DESCRIPTION	British-Indian novelist and author
DATE OF BIRTH	June 19, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH	Mumbai, India
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH