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Who is Salman Rushdie, the author whose book ‘Satanic Verses’ made him a target, changed his life? – times of India

August 13, 2022
Sezarr

New Delhi: Prolific writer and novelist Salman RushdieNow in hospital after being stabbed during an event in New York, he was born in Mumbai in 1947.
He has faced many controversies due to his political and religious beliefs. His novel The Satanic Verses attracted the ire of Muslims and was banned in many countries.
Here’s what you need to know about Salman Rushdie’s life and his literary career:

  1. Born in 1947 in Mumbai to British-American Kashmiri Muslim parents
  2. He was educated at the Cathedral and John Connon School in Mumbai; Rugby School and King’s College, Cambridge in Warwickshire, England, from where he graduated with a BA in History
  3. Rushdie has been married four times: to Clarissa Luard, American novelist Marianne Wiggins, Elizabeth West, and Indian-American actress Padma Lakshmi.
  4. In several interviews, Rushdie has declared himself a ‘hardcore atheist’; He has defended the comic criticism of religions and called religions a ‘medieval form of justification’.
  5. The author of 14 novels, Rushdie received 5 Booker nominations; Won the Booker Prize for his second novel Midnight’s Children (1981)
  6. His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), inspired by the life of the Prophet, drew angry reactions from the Muslim world; India was the first among 20 countries to ban the Satanic Verses.
  7. In 1989, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa on Rushdie’s life for The Satanic Verses, placing a $2.8 million bounty on his head.
  8. After the fatwa, he moved between safe houses under the pseudonym Joseph Anton for nearly 13 years, changing grounds 56 times in the first six months.
  9. He was given police protection in the UK after the fatwa, and has been living in the US since 2000.
  10. He was awarded a knighthood at the Queen’s Birthday Honors in 2007 for his services to literature