Salman Rushdie

At 77 years old, Salman Rushdie has this physical status:

Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (born 19 June 1947) is a British Indian novelist and essayist.

Midnight's Children (1981), his second book, won the Booker Award in 1981 and was rated as "the best book of all winners" on two separate occasions, commemorating the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the competition.

The Indian subcontinent is a major plot in his fantasy.

He blends magical realism with historical fiction; his research is concerned with the numerous links, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations. The Satanic Verses (1988), his fourth book, was the subject of a lot of controversy, sparking demonstrations from Muslims in several countries.

On February 14, 1989, death threats against him were directed, including a fatwa calling for his assassination ordered by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran's Supreme Leader.

Rushdie was placed under police watch by the British government. Rushdie was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the UK's top literary body, in 1983.

In January 1999, he was named Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France.

Queen Elizabeth II knighted him in June 2007 for his contributions to literature.

Rushdie ranked 13th on the Times' list of the 50 best British writers since 1945. Since 2000, he has lived in the United States.

In 2015, he was named Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University.

He began teaching at Emory University years ago.

He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Joseph Anton: A Memoir, an account of his life in the aftermath of the scandal surrounding The Satanic Verses, was published in 2012.

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Career

Rushdie worked as a copywriter for Aero and "Naughty But Nice" for cream cakes, as well as for the agency Ayer Barker (until 1982), for whom he wrote the text "That'll do fine" for American Express. Rushdie, who was co-working with musician Ronnie Bond, penned the words for an advertisement campaign for the now defunct Burnley Building Society, which was shot at Good Earth Studios, London. George Chandler sung "The Best Dreams" and it was sung by George Chandler. Rushdie wrote Midnight's Children while living in Ogilvy before becoming a full-time writer.

The public and literary critics were generally dismissive of Rushdie's first book, Grimus (1975), a part-science fiction story. Midnight's Children (1981), his next book, catapulted him to literary prominence. This book was nominated for the Best Novel of the Year in 1993 and 2008, and it was named as the best novel to have received the award during the first 25 and 40 years. Children born at the stroke of midnight as India gained its independence, are given special powers and a link to other children born at the start of a new and turbulent period in the history of the Indian subcontinent and India's modern history. Saleem Sinai's character has been likened to Rushdie's. The author has denied the suggestion of writing any of his stories as autobiographical, but he did say, "People assume that since certain parts of the story are drawn from your own experience, it becomes you." I've never felt that I've written an autobiographical book," says the author.

Rushdie's Children wrote Shame (1983), in which he depicts Pakistan's political chaos, based on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Shame received France's Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Best Foreign Book) and was a close runner-up for the Booker Award. Both these works of postcolonial literature are characterized by a sense of magic realism and the immigrant view that Rushdie is acutely aware of as a descendant of the Kashmiri diaspora.

In 1987, Rushdie published The Jaguar Smile, a non-fiction book about Nicaragua. This book is based on his first-hand experiences and study at the site of Sandinista's political experiments. He became interested in Nicaragua after being a neighbor of Madame Somoza, the former Nicaraguan tyrant's wife, and his son Zafar was born around the time of the Nicaraguan revolution.

The Satanic Verses, his most influential book, was published in 1988 (see section below). In 1990, Haroun and the Sea of Stories were followed by Haroun. It's about the dangers of story-telling and an allegorical defense of the power of stories over silence, set against a fatwa.

Rushdie has written numerous short stories, some of which were collected in East (1994). Last Sigh, a family epic spanning more than 100 years of India's history, was published in 1995. The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999) is a remaking of Orpheus' myth that reveals an alternative history of modern rock music. Rushdie is credited as the lyricist in the book for the song of the same name by U2; hence, the lyricist is named in the book.

Many commentators lauded Rushdie's 2005 novel Shalimar the Clown, a tale about passion and betrayal set in Kashmir and Los Angeles, as a return to form.

He lauds Italian writer Italo Calvino and American writer Thomas Pynchon, among others, in his 2002 non-fiction collection Step Across This Line. Jorge Luis Borges, Mikhail Bulgakov, Lewis Carroll, Günter Grass, and James Joyce were among his early influences. Rushdie was a personal friend of Angela Carter's and she was lauded greatly in the foreword to her collection Burning Your Boats.

The Enchantress of Florence, one of Rushdie's most challenging pieces that focuses on the past, was published in 2008. It tells the tale of a European's visit to Akbar's court and his admission that he is a missing cousin of the Mughal emperor. In a review by The Guardian, the book was praised as a "complete blend of history with fable."

Luka and the Fire of Life, a sequel to Haroun and the Sea of Stories, was published in November 2010 to critical acclaim. He revealed earlier this year that he was writing his memoirs entitled Joseph Anton: A Memoir, which was published in September 2012.

Rushdie was one of the first major writers to embrace Booktrack (a company that connects ebooks with customised soundtracks) when he launched his short story "In the South" on the website in 2012.

Rushdie's novel Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights was released in 2015, a leap back to his old favorite style of magic realism. This novel is based on the design of a Chinese mystery box with different layers. Rushdie goes on to explore multiple aspects of transnationalism and cosmopolitanism by focusing on a war of the universe, which a supernatural world of jinns also accompanies.

The Golden House, a satirical novel set in modern America, was published in 2017. Rushdie's fourteenth book Quichotte was published in 2019, based on Miguel de Cervantes' classic book Don Quixote.

A collection of essays from 2003 to 2020 was published in 2021 Languages of Truth, a series of essays published between 2003 and 2020. Victory City, Rushdie's fifteenth novel about a woman who breathes a fantastical legend, will be published in February 2023.

Rushdie has written a number of highly acclaimed and critically acclaimed books. In 1981 for Midnight's Children, 1983 for Shame, 1995 for The Moor's Last Sigh, and in 2019 for Quichotte, his works have been shortlisted for the Booker Award five times, as well as in 1980 for The Satanic Verses. He was given the award in 1981. Shalimar the Clown's 2005 novel was a finalist for the Whitbread Book Awards, and in the United Kingdom, he received the prestigious Hutch Crossword Book Award. It was shortlisted for the 2007 International Dublin Literary Award. Rushdie's books have spawned 30 book-length studies and over 700 articles on his writing.

Rushdie has mentored younger Indian (and ethnic-Indian) writers, inspired an entire generation of Indo-Anglian writers, and is regarded as a leading writer in postcolonial literature in general. He opposed the introduction of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act in the United Kingdom, something he writes about in his contribution to Free Expression Is No Offence, a collection of essays by various writers that was released by Penguin in November 2005.

Rushdie, the founder of the PEN American Center from 2004 to 2006, was the President of the PEN American Center, and he was the curator of the PEN World Voices Festival. He began his five-year tenure as a Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, where he has also deposited his archives. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in May 2008. He taught a course on British Literature in 2014 and served as the keynote speaker for the 2015 Nobel Laureate in New York University.

Rushdie is a member of The Lunchbox Fund, a non-profit group that provides daily meals to students of Soweto's township schools. He is a member of the Secular Coalition for America, an advocacy group representing the interests of atheistic and humanistic Americans in Washington, D.C., as well as a patron of Humanists UK (formerly the British Humanist Association). He is the recipient of the International Academy of Humanism's Laureate. He became a founding patron of Ralston College, a new liberal arts college that has adopted a Latin translation of a word ("free expression is life itself") from an address he delivered at Columbia University in 1991 to commemorate the first amendment to the US Constitution.

Rushdie says he may have made it into an actor if his writing career hadn't been fruitful. He aspired to appear in Hollywood films from an early age (which he later realized in his frequent cameo appearances).

In some of his books, Rushdie includes fictional television and movie characters. He made a cameo appearance in the film Bridget Jones' Diary, which is also full of literary in-jokes. Rushdie, a British filmmaker whose 2005 film, Water, was a guest host on The Charlie Rose Show, on May 12, 2006, where he interviewed Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta, whose 2005 film, Water, endured violent demonstrations. In the film version (Hunt's directorial debut) of Elinor Lipman's book Then She Found Me, he appears as Helen Hunt's obstetrician-gynecologist. He appeared on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher in September 2008 and again in March 2009. Rushdie has said he was approached for a cameo in Talladega Nights: "They had this dream, but they had one shot in which three very unusual people were seen as NASCAR drivers." Julian Schnabel, Lou Reed, and I think they both approached him. We were all supposed to be wearing the uniforms and the helmet, strolling in slow motion with the heat haze." They didn't have time to do it at the end of the day.

Rushdie drafted a petition in support of film director Roman Polanski's release in 2009 after Polanski was arrested in Switzerland in connection with his 1977 arrest on drugging and raping a 13-year-old teen.

Rushdie coproduced on the filmplay for his book Midnight's Children with director Deepa Mehta. Midnight's Children was also a film that was released. Seema Biswas, Shabana Azmi, Nandita Das, and Irrfan Khan appeared in the film. The film was released in 2012 in September 2010 and was released in September 2010.

Rushdie revealed in June 2011 that he had written the first draft of a script for a new television showtime showtime, which also serves as an executive producer. According to Rushdie, the upcoming series, The Next People, would be "a sort of paranoid science-fiction story with people missing and being replaced by others." Rushdie, who believed that television would give him more creative control than film, was suggested by his US agents. Working Title, the company behind Four Weddings and a Funeral, and Shaun of the Dead, is the company behind Four Weddings and a Funeral.

In 2017, Rushdie appeared in episode 3 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, chatting with Larry David to give advice on how Larry should cope with the fatwa that has been ordered against him.

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