One of the world’s most acclaimed writers, British Indian author Salman Rushdie is renowned for his expansive, lyrically inventive fiction, often mixing magic-realism with historical settings and political themes.
By turns satirical and playful, Rushdie’s masterly novel about identity and alienation remains an ever-relevant investigation into the freedom to think differently and to question what is sacred.
Born in Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1947, Rushdie was educated at Cambridge where he joined the Cambridge Footlights. His first novel Grimus was published in 1975 but it was his second, Midnight’s Children, which established his reputation. A sweeping epic of India’s history as seen through the eyes of a factory worker, it won the Booker Prize for Fiction, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and in 1993 was pronounced the 'Booker of Bookers', in a celebration marking the award's 25-year history.
In 1988 Rushdie published The Satanic Verses which won the Whitbread Novel Award. A fictional depiction of the history of Islam the book’s subject matter led to blasphemy accusations and protests by Islamist groups in India and Pakistan. In 1989 the orthodox Iranian government issued a fatwā against Rushdie, forcing him to go into hiding for several years.
Since then Rushdie has continued to write and publish books, essays and plays for adults and children. These include the novels Fury, Shalimar the Clown, The Enchantress of Florence and The Golden House as well as the travelogue The Jaguar Smile and the memoir Joseph Anton.
Rushdie was knighted for services to literature in the Queen's Birthday Honours on 16 June 2007.
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