Salman Rushdie papers

Salman Rushdie (1947- ) is an Indian born British novelist, essayist, and critic. He was born in Bombay (now known as Mumbai), India on June 19, 1947, to Anis Ahmed and Negi (Butt) Rushdie. He moved to England to attend King's College in Cambridge and graduated with a Master's degree in history in 1968. During the 1970s, Rushdie worked as a freelance advertising copywriter for various London firms including Ayer Barker.

In 1975, Rushdie published his first novel, Grimus, but it was his second novel, Midnight's Children, published in 1981, that propelled him onto the international literary stage. This novel won the Booker McConnell prize for fiction that year, and has since been honored as the Best of the Booker both in 1993 and in 2008. Shame, his third novel, which addressed the political unrest in Pakistan, was published in 1983 and won the Prix du Meillur Prize for best foreign language novel in 1984. In 1986, Rushdie visited Nicaragua to observe the social and political conditions of the country which had been under Sandinista control since 1979. The result of this trip, his first work of nonfiction, The Jaguar Smile, was released in 1987

In early 1988, Rushdie published The Satanic Verses, and almost immediately the work received international attention. The book was banned in many Muslim countries for what many believed was its offensive depiction of the Islamic faith and the prophet Mohammed. The Iranian religious leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, soon proclaimed that Rushdie and his publishers should be killed. The death sentence, or fatwa, sent Rushdie into hiding and was reaffirmed by the Iranian government until 1998.

Rushdie continued to write during the years of the fatwa, and in 1990 Haroun and the Sea of Stories, a children's story that began as a bedtime story for his son Zafar, was published in England. Next, Rushdie released a collection of his essays from the previous decade entitled Imaginary Homelands: The Collected Essays, (published under the alternate title Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991 in the United States). In 1994, Rushdie released a collection of short fiction, East, West. Rushdie's next novel, The Moor's Last Sigh (1995), was shortlisted for the Booker McConnell Prize, in addition to winning the Whitbread Novel Award and earned Rushdie the distinction of Author of the Year by the British Book awards. In 1999, Rushdie published The Ground Beneath Her Feet, his interpretation of the Orpheus myth, with global pop stars as the main characters.

Rushdie published several other novels in the next decade, including Fury (2001), Shalimar the Clown (2005), and The Enchantress of Florence (2008). In addition to his fiction, Rushdie has written numerous essays and opinion columns for international publications. In 2003, a second volume of these collected essays was published as Step Across the Line: Collected Nonfiction, 1992-2002.

Rushdie has two sons; Zafar, from his first wife, Clarissa Luard, and Milan, from his third wife, Elizabeth West.