Salman Rushdie

Back | Genres | Bibliography | Prizes and awards | Author statement | Further reading on this site | Contact details | Printer-friendly version

	Photo: © Penguin

Biography

Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) on 19 June 1947. He went to school in Bombay and at Rugby in England, and read History at King's College, Cambridge, where he joined the Cambridge Footlights theatre company. After graduating, he lived with his family who had moved to Pakistan in 1964, and worked briefly in television before returning to England, beginning work as a copywriter for an advertising agency. His first novel, Grimus, was published in 1975.

His second novel, the acclaimed Midnight's Children, was published in 1981. It won the Booker Prize for Fiction, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction), an Arts Council Writers' Award and the English-Speaking Union Award, and in 1993 was judged to have been the 'Booker of Bookers', the best novel to have won the Booker Prize for Fiction in the award's 25-year history. The novel narrates key events in the history of India through the story of pickle-factory worker Saleem Sinai, one of 1001 children born as India won independence from Britain in 1947. The critic Malcolm Bradbury acclaimed the novel's achievement in The Modern British Novel (Penguin, 1994): 'a new start for the late-twentieth-century novel.'

Rushdie's third novel, Shame (1983), which many critics saw as an allegory of the political situation in Pakistan, won the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. The publication in 1988 of his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, lead to accusations of blasphemy against Islam and demonstrations by Islamist groups in India and Pakistan. The orthodox Iranian leadership issued a fatwa against Rushdie on 14 February 1989 - effectively a sentence of death - and he was forced into hiding under the protection of the British government and police. The book itself centres on the adventures of two Indian actors, Gibreel and Saladin, who fall to earth in Britain when their Air India jet explodes. It won the Whitbread Novel Award in 1988.

Salman Rushdie continued to write and publish books, including a children's book, Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990), a warning about the dangers of story-telling that won the Writers' Guild Award (Best Children's Book), and which he adapted for the stage (with Tim Supple and David Tushingham. It was first staged at the Royal National Theatre, London.) There followed a book of essays entitled Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991 (1991); East, West (1994), a book of short stories; and a novel, The Moor's Last Sigh (1995), the history of the wealthy Zogoiby family told through the story of Moraes Zogoiby, a young man from Bombay descended from Sultan Muhammad XI, the last Muslim ruler of Andalucía.

The Ground Beneath Her Feet, published in 1999, re-works the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in the context of modern popular music. His most recent novel, Fury, set in New York at the beginning of the third millennium, was published in 2001. He is also the author of a travel narrative, The Jaguar Smile (1987), an account of a visit to Nicaragua in 1986.

Salman Rushdie is Honorary Professor in the Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was made Distinguished Fellow in Literature at the University of East Anglia in 1995. He was awarded the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 1993 and the Aristeion Literary Prize in 1996, and has received eight honorary doctorates. He was elected to the Board of American PEN in 2002. The subjects in his new book, Step Across This Line: Collected Non-fiction 1992-2002 (2002), range from popular culture and football to twentieth-century literature and politics. Salman Rushdie is also co-author (with Tim Supple and Simon Reade) of the stage adaptation of Midnight's Children, premiered by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2002.

Shalimar The Clown, the story of Max Ophuls, his killer and daughter, and a fourth character who links them all, was published in 2005. It was shortlisted for the 2005 Whitbread Novel Award.

Salman Rushdie became a KBE in 2007. In 2008, his latest novel, The Enchantress of Florence (2008), was published and Midnight's Children won the 'Best of the Booker' Prize. He also co-edited The Best American Short Stories (2008) with Heidi Pitlor.
 

Top of page

Genres (in alphabetical order)

Children, Criticism, Drama, Essays, Fiction, Non-fiction, Short stories, Travel

Bibliography

Grimus   Gollancz, 1975

Midnight's Children   Cape, 1981

Shame   Cape, 1983

The Jaguar Smile   Picador, 1987

The Satanic Verses   Viking, 1988

Haroun and the Sea of Stories   Granta, 1990

In Good Faith   Granta, 1990

Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991   Granta, 1991

The Wizard of Oz   British Film Institute, 1992

East, West   Cape, 1994

The Moor's Last Sigh   Cape, 1995

The Vintage Book of Indian Writing   (co-editor with Elizabeth West)   Vintage, 1997

The Ground Beneath Her Feet   Cape, 1999

Fury   Cape, 2001

Step Across This Line: Collected Non-fiction 1992-2002   Cape, 2002

Shalimar The Clown   Cape, 2005

The Best American Short Stories   (editor with Heidi Pitlor)   Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (US), 2008

The Enchantress of Florence   Cape, 2008

Read about books by Salman Rushdie at encompassculture.com - the British Council's book database and global online book club

Buy books by Salman Rushdie at Amazon.co.uk

Top of page

Prizes and awards

1981   Arts Council Writers' Award

1981   Booker Prize for Fiction   Midnight's Children

1981   English-Speaking Union Award   Midnight's Children

1981   James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction)   (joint winner)   Midnight's Children

1983   Booker Prize for Fiction   (shortlist)   Shame

1984   Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger (France)   Shame

1988   Booker Prize for Fiction   (shortlist)   The Satanic Verses

1988   Whitbread Novel Award   The Satanic Verses

1989   German Author of the Year   The Satanic Verses

1992   Kurt Tucholsky Prize (Sweden)

1992   Writers' Guild Award (Best Children's Book)   Haroun and the Sea of Stories

1993   Austrian State Prize for European Literature

1993   Booker of Bookers   (special award made to celebrate 25 years of the Booker Prize for Fiction)   Midnight's Children

1993   Prix Colette (Switzerland)

1995   Booker Prize for Fiction   (shortlist)   The Moor's Last Sigh

1995   British Book Awards Author of the Year   The Moor's Last Sigh

1995   Whitbread Novel Award   The Moor's Last Sigh

1996   Aristeion Literary Prize

1997   Mantova Literary Prize (Italy)

1998   Budapest Grand Prize for Literature (Hungary)

1999   Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France)

1999   Freedom of the City, Mexico City (Mexico)

2005   Whitbread Novel Award   (shortlist)   Shalimar The Clown

2006   Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best Book)   (shortlist)   Shalimar The Clown

2007   International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award   (shortlist)   Shalimar The Clown

2007   KBE

2007   Man Booker International Prize   (shortlist)

2008   Best of the Booker   Midnight's Children

2008   James Joyce Award

2009   Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best Book)   (shortlist)   The Enchantress of Florence

Top of page

Author statement

'It seems to me, more and more, that the fictional project on which I've been involved ever since I began Midnight's Children back in 1975 is one of self-definition. That novel, Shame and The Satanic Verses strike me as an attempt to come to terms with the various component parts of myself - countries, memories, histories, families, gods. First the writer invents the books; then, perhaps, the books invent the writer.

But whenever I say anything about my work I want to contradict myself at once. To say that beyond self-exploration lies a sense of writing as sacrament, and maybe that's closer to how I feel: that writing fills the hole left by the departure of God.

But, again, I love story, and comedy, and dreams. And newness: the novel, as its name suggests, is about the making of the new.

None of this is quite true; all of it is true enough.'

Top of page

Further reading on this site

Vote for the Best of the Booker
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of The Booker Prize: Pat Barker , Peter Carey , J. M. Coetzee , J. G. Farrell, Nadine Gordimer and Salman Rushdie are all in... more...   (12/05/2008)

Cambridge Seminar
The Cambridge Seminar takes place every two years. It was last held over a week in mid-July 2009. The British Council's Cambridge Seminar on contemporary literature has influenced discussion, performance... more...   (30/06/2003)

Walberberg Seminar
The Walberberg Seminar is the British Council's largest and longest running annual literature seminar overseas. The most recent Walberberg Seminar was held in January 2009 at Akademie Schmockwitz, Berlin on... more...   (15/12/2004)

Top of page

Contact information

Publisher (General enquiries) Jonathan Cape Ltd Random House UK Ltd 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road London  SW1V 2SA England Tel: +44 (0)20 7840 8539 Fax: +44 (0)20 7932 0077 http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/

Agent The Wylie Agency (UK) Ltd 17 Bedford Square London  WC1B 3JA England Tel: +44 (0)20 7908 5900 Fax: +44 (0)20 7908 5901 E-mail: mail@wylieagency.co.uk http://www.wylieagency.co.uk

Top of page