Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie CH FRSL is a British-American author of Indian origin.
His writing frequently mixes magical realism with historical fiction and focuses on the Indian subcontinent’s linkages, disturbances, and migrations between Eastern and Western cultures.
Midnight’s Children (1981), Rushdie’s second novel, received the Booker Prize in 1981 and was named “the finest novel of all winners” on two occasions, honoring the 25th and 40th anniversaries of the prize.
His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), was controversial, eliciting objections from Muslims. Death threats were made against him, including a fatwa demanding his killing issued by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in 1989.
Rushdie was placed under house arrest by the British authorities.
Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1983. In 1999, he was named Commandeur of l’Ordre des Arts and des Lettres de France.
He was knighted in 2007 for his contributions to literature.
In 2008, The Times named him the twelfth best British writer since 1945.
Rushdie has resided in the United States since 2000. In 2015, he was designated Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He formerly taught at Emory University. He became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In the aftermath of the uproar over The Satanic Verses, he wrote Joseph Anton: A Memoir in 2012.
