Novelist
"A Morning with Salman Rushdie"
Thursday, April 20, 2006, 11:10 a.m.
Salman Rushdie is one of the most successful, controversial, and celebrated novelists of his generation. His novels have won critical acclaim and widespread commercial success, while his ideas have stimulated, galvanized, and provoked.
Rushdie is the author of such well-known books such as Midnight's Children and The Satanic Verses. This latter novel was deemed sacrilegious by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeni, who issued a fatwa against Rushdie in 1989. Despite this death sentence, Rushdie went on to produce some of his most compelling work, including The Moor's Last Sigh and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, while the fatwa was still in place.
Step Across This Line: Collected Non-Fiction, 1992-2002 is a collection of articles, some of which explore his own reaction to the fatwa, as well as reactions of the media and various governments. His latest novel, Shalimar the Clown, was released in September 2005.
In 2004, Rushdie was named the president of The PEN American Centre, the largest branch of PEN International, the world's oldest human rights organization.
He is the winner of numerous international literary prizes and awards, including the Man Booker, the "Booker of Bookers" Award for the best novel to win the Booker Prize in its first 25 years; the Whitbread Prize for Best Noel; the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger; the Budapest Grand Prize for Literature; the Mantova Prize in Italy; the Austrian State Prize for European Literature; and the London International Writers' Award.
Read the Press Release: "Satanic Verses" Author Salman Rushdie Speaks at Lawrence University April 20
