Salman Rushdie

Also known as Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie, Rushdie, Ahmed Salman Rushdie, Joseph Anton

Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)

AI overview

Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British-American novelist known for his literary works that blend magical realism with contemporary themes. He became one of the most prominent and influential figures in modern literature, though his work and life have been marked by significant controversy and challenges.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Person · Open Library

Born: 1947
Works: 137

Top works

The Best American Short Stories 2008
Merely connect
Midnight's Children (SparkNotes Literature Guide)
Hārūn va daryā-yi qiṣṣahʹhā
Victory City

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type: Person
Gender: Male
Origin: United Kingdom
Active from: 1947-06-19

Official site Discogs

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners: 951
Total plays: 17,792

Similar artists

Christopher HitchensSalman Rushdie (Disc 2)Cormac McCarthyRichard DawkinsSalman Rushdie Disc 3

Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie ( /sælˈmɑːn ˈrʊʃdi/, Kashmiri: अहमद सलमान रुशदी (Devanagari), احمد سلمان رشدی (Nastaleeq); born 19 June 1947) is an Indian-British novelist and essayist. His second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981. Much of his fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent. His style is often classified as magical realism mixed with historical fiction, and a dominant theme of his work is the story of the many connections <a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Salman+Rushdie">Read more on Last.fm</a>

via Last.fm · Salman Rushdie

Recent publications · Crossref

5 total works indexed

via Crossref · CC0

Quotes

“It matters, it always matters, to name rubbish as rubbish ... to do otherwise is to legitimize it.”
“God, Satan, Paradise, and Hell all vanished one day in my fifteenth year, when I quite abruptly lost my faith. ... and afterwards, to prove my new-found atheism, I bought myself a rather tasteless ham sandwich, and so partook for the first time of the forbidden flesh of the swine. No thunderbolt arrived to strike me down. ... From that day to this I have thought of myself as a wholly secular person.”
“The responsibility for violence lies with those who perpetrate it.”
“The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas — uncertainty, progress, change — into crimes.”
“What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.”
“I don't think there is a need for an entity like God in my life.”

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Works in European collections

1 object attributed to Salman Rushdie, held across European museums, libraries & archives · via Europeana

Untitled

~40 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (born 19 June 1947) is an Indian-born British and American novelist. His work often combines magical realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, typically set on the Indian subcontinent. Rushdie's second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was deemed to be "the best novel of all winners" on two occasions that marked the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize.

After his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), Rushdie became the subject of several assassination attempts and death threats because of what was seen by some to be an irreverent depiction of Muhammad. The controversy involving the Satanic Verses included a fatwa calling for his death issued by Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran. The book was banned in 20 countries. Numerous killings and bombings have been carried out by extremists who cited the book as motivation, sparking a debate about censorship and religiously motivated violence. In 2022, Rushdie survived a stabbing at the Chautauqua Institution that led to loss of his right eye and damage to his liver and hands. Two of the men who went to his aid were awarded the Carnegie Medal for heroism in 2025.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Salman Rushdie” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.