Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie CH FRSL was an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magical realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, 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, marking the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize. His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), was the subject of controversy, provoking protests from Muslims. Death threats were made against him, including a fatwa calling for his assassination issued by Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran, in 1989. The British government put Rushdie under police protection.
In 1983, Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was appointed a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in 1999. Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for his services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked him thirteenth on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Since 2000, Rushdie has lived in the United States. He was named Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University in 2015. Earlier, he taught at Emory University. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he published Joseph Anton: A Memoir, an account of his life in the wake of the controversy over The Satanic Verses.
On 12 August 2022, Rushdie was stabbed by a man before he was scheduled to deliver a lecture at an event in Chautauqua, New York.
