Salman Rushdie Biography
Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British-American novelist whose work is set on the Indian subcontinent and combines magic realism with historical fiction, focusing on the connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations.
Salman Rushdie Age
Rushdie is 75 years old as of June 2022. He was born Ahmed Salman Rushdie on 19 June 1947 in Mumbai, India.
Salman Rushdie Education
Rushdie was educated at the Cathedral and John Connon School in Fort, South Bombay, before moving to England to attend Rugby School in Rugby, Warwickshire, and then King’s College, Cambridge, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in history.
Salman Rushdie Height
Rushdie stands at a height of 5 feet 7 inches(1.7 m) tall.
Salman Rushdie Parents – Family
He was born Ahmed Salman Rushdie on 19 June 1947 in Mumbai, India. Rushdie is the son of Negin Bhatt, a teacher, and Anis Ahmed Rushdie, a Cambridge-educated lawyer turned businessman. In his memoir from 2012, he said that his father took the name Rushdie to honor Averroes (Ibn Rushd).
Salman Rushdie Wife
Rushdie has had at least a number of relationship and has been married and divorced four times. From 1976 to 1987, he was married for the first time to Arts Council of England literature officer Clarissa Luard. Their son, born in 1979, is now married to jazz singer Natalie Rushdie, who currently resides in London. In the mid-1980s, he divorced Clarissa Luard for Australian writer Robyn Davidson. Bruce Chatwin, a mutual friend, introduced him to Robyn. They had already broken up by the time Rushdie and Davidson divorced Clarissa in 1987. They were never married. Rushdie’s second wife was American novelist Marianne Wiggins; they married in 1988 and divorced in 1993. From 1997 to 2004, he was married to British author and editor Elizabeth West; Their son was born in 1997. Rushdie wed Padma Lakshmi, an Indian-born actress, model, and host of the American reality television show Top Chef, in 2004, shortly after his third divorce. According to Rushdie, Lakshmi requested a divorce in January 2007, and the couple filed for one in July of that year.
Salman Rushdie Religion
Despite coming from a liberal Muslim family, Rushdie is now an atheist. In a 2006 PBS interview, Rushdie described himself as a “hardline atheist.” Despite being “formed by Muslim culture more than any other” and being a student of Islam, Rushdie claimed to be a lapsed Muslim in an interview following the fatwa in 1989. That year, during a different interview. In 1990, he issued a statement reaffirming his Muslim faith, rejecting the criticisms of Islam made by the characters in his book, and pledging to work for a greater understanding of the religion around the world in the “hope that it would reduce the threat of Muslims acting on the fatwa to kill him.”
Salman Rushdie Career
The Satanic Verses’ publication in September 1988 sparked an immediate uproar in the Islamic world due to what some saw as an irreverent portrayal of Muhammad. The title alludes to the disputed Muslim tradition discussed in the book. According to legend, Muhammad supplemented the Qur’an with verses (Ayah) affirming the divinity of three pagan Arabian goddesses who were once worshiped in Mecca. According to tradition, Muhammad eventually withdrew the verses and claimed that the devil had enticed him to speak them in order to appease the Meccans (hence the “Satanic” verses). Nonetheless, the narrator informs the reader that the contentious lyrics were written by Archangel Gabriel.
The book was prohibited in numerous nations with sizable Muslim populations (13 in total: Iran, India, Bangladesh, Sudan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Thailand, Tanzania, Indonesia, Singapore, Venezuela, and Pakistan). In response to the demonstrations, Rushdie wrote a commentary for The Observer on January 22, 1989, referring to Muhammad as “one of the great geniuses of global history” while pointing out that Islamic doctrine considers Muhammad to be human and therefore not perfect. It is an attempt to write about migration, its tensions, and its transformations, he claimed, not “an anti-religious novel.”
After a bloody riot against the book broke out in Pakistan in the middle of February 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then-Supreme Leader of Iran and a Shiite scholar, issued a fatwa calling for the execution of Rushdie and his publishers and urging Muslims to report Rushdie to those who can execute him if they are unable to do so themselves. Rushdie received 24-hour police protection from the British Conservative administration of Margaret Thatcher, although many politicians on both sides had a bad opinion of the author. The former chairman of the Conservative Party, Norman Tebbit, referred to Rushdie as a “outstanding villain” whose “public life has been a record of despicable acts of betrayal of his upbringing, religion, adopted home, and nationality” shortly after leading a march through Leicester calling for the book to be banned in 1989.
Christopher Hitchens, a journalist, vehemently defended Rushdie, urging detractors to blame the fatwa’s violence rather than the book or the author. According to Hitchens, the fatwa was the first salvo in a cultural conflict over freedom. In 2021, the BBC aired a two-hour documentary directed by Mobeen Azhar and Chloe Hadjimatheou that featured interviews with many of the book’s key critics and supporters from 1988 to 1989 and concluded that minority (racial and religious) politics in England and other countries fueled campaigns against the book. The fatwa would remain in effect indefinitely, according to the Iranian state news agency, because fatwas can only be revoked by the person who issued them, and Khomeini had since died.
Salman Rushdie’s Net Worth
Rushdie has an estimated net worth of $15 million.
Salman Rushdie Books
- Grimus
- Midnight’s Children
- Shame
- The Satanic Verses
- The Moor’s Last Sigh
- The Ground Beneath Her Feet
- Fury
- East, West
- Mirrorwork: 50 Years of Indian Writing 1947–1997
- The Best American Short Stories
- Haroun and the Sea of Stories
- Luka and the Fire of Life
- The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey
- In Good Faith, Granta Books
- Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981–1991
- The Wizard of Oz: BFI Film Classics, British Film Institute
- Mohandas Gandhi, Time
- Imagine There Is No Heaven
- Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992–2002
- The East Is Blue
- “A fine pickle”, The Guardian
- In the South, Booktrack