Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie, born on June 19, 1947, in Bombay (now Mumbai), India, is the author of fourteen novels. After working as an advertising copywriter in London in the seventies, he published his debut, Grimus, in 1975. His first major novel, Midnight’s Children, was published in 1981 to great acclaim, and received the Booker Prize. His 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses, caused controversy in the Islamic world because of a character that resembled the Prophet Muhammad; consequently, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Rushdie, forcing him to go into hiding and to receive protection from Scotland Yard. (Susan Sontag, then president of PEN America, offered unwavering support to Rushdie.) Nevertheless, he has continued writing novels, essays, and short stories, as well as two children’s books. In 2019, his fourteenth novel, Quichotte, which is based loosely on Cervantes’s Don Quixote, was nominated for the Booker Prize.

Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths