Nile Kenya

Salman Rushdie, born Ahmed Salman Rushdie on June 19, 1947, in Bombay (now Mumbai), India, is an acclaimed British-American novelist and essayist. He was educated at Rugby School and later attended King’s College, Cambridge, where he earned a degree in history. After working as an advertising copywriter in London during the 1970s, Rushdie published his first novel, Grimus, in 1975, but it was his second novel, Midnight’s Children (1981), that garnered international acclaim and won the Booker Prize. The novel is a magical realist narrative that explores India’s transition to independence and has been hailed as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.

Rushdie’s fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), sparked significant controversy due to its portrayal of Islamic themes and figures, leading to widespread protests and a fatwa issued by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini calling for his assassination. This forced Rushdie into hiding for several years under police protection. Despite the threats to his life, he continued to write and publish, producing notable works such as The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995), Shalimar the Clown (2005), and Quichotte (2019).

In addition to his fiction, Rushdie has written essays and memoirs, including Joseph Anton (2012), which recounts his experiences during the years following the fatwa. He became a U.S. citizen in 2016 while retaining his British citizenship and was knighted in 2007 for his services to literature.

On August 12, 2022, Rushdie was attacked and stabbed multiple times while speaking at an event in New York but survived the attack. His most recent work, Knife, published in 2024, reflects on this traumatic experience. Throughout his career, Rushdie has been a prominent advocate for free speech and has received numerous awards for his contributions to literature.