by Salman Rushdie ﻏﻀﺐ {Read Ebook {PDF EPUB Salman Rushdie Biography. The works of the Indian author Salman Rushdie often focused on outrages of history and particularly of religions. His book The Satanic Verses earned him a death sentence from the Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1900–1989). Early life and education. Ahmed Salman Rushdie was born on June 19, 1947, in Bombay, India, the only son among Anis Ahmed Rushdie and Negin Butt's four children. His father was a businessman who had been educated at Cambridge University in England. Rushdie's childhood was happy and he was always surrounded by books. Rushdie remembers wanting to be a writer at age five. He was sent to England at age fourteen to attend Rugby, a private school. His fellow students tormented him both because he was Indian and because he had no athletic ability. Rushdie later attended Cambridge, as his father had done, and his experience there was much more positive. He received his master's degree in history in 1968. After a brief career as an actor he worked as a free-lance advertising copywriter in England from 1970 to 1980. The experience of expatriation (living outside one's country of birth), which he shared with many writers of his generation who were born in the Third World, is an important theme in his work. First books. Rushdie's first published book, Grimus (1975), was classified as science fiction by many critics. It is the story of Flapping Eagle, a Native American who is given the gift of immortality (eternal life) and goes on a journey to find the meaning of life. Although the book received positive reviews, it did not sell very well. Rushdie continued working as a part-time ad writer over the five years it took him to write Midnight's Children. He quit his job after finishing the novel without even knowing if it would be published. Released first in the United States in 1981, Midnight's Children is in part the story of a baby who was not only the result of an extramarital affair (an affair between a married person and someone other than his or her spouse) but who was then switched at birth with a second child from a similar situation. The hero is also caught between the two great Indian religions, Islam and Hinduism. Finally, he spends his life moving back and forth between the Indian republic and Pakistan. The book received rave reviews in the United States and was a popular and critical success in England. Rushdie followed this up with Shame (1983), the story of a Pakistani. Angers Muslim leaders. Rushdie's The Satanic Verses (1988) opens with the survival of two Indian men who fall out of the sky after their jumbo jet to England is blown up in midair by terrorists. These two characters then gain divine and demonic powers. Rushdie's habit of using the atrocities of history—especially involving religion—made The Satanic Verses a book of frightening precognition (describing events that have not yet occurred): another character in the novel is a writer sentenced to death by a religious leader. The title of the novel refers to verses from the Koran (the holy book of the Islamic faith), which were removed by later Islamic historians, describing a time when the Arab prophet (one with religious insight) Mohammed (the founder of Islam) briefly changed his belief in a single god and allowed mention to be made of three local goddesses. This was considered offensive and an insult to Islam by the Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who issued a fatwa, or religious order, calling for Rushdie's death. Rushdie went into hiding and received round-the-clock protection from British security guards. Rushdie's wife of thirteen months, author Marianne Wiggins, went into hiding with him when the death threat was announced. She soon emerged and announced that their marriage was over. Khomeini's death threat extended not only to Rushdie himself, but to the publishers of The Satanic Verses, any bookseller who carried it, and any Muslim who publicly approved of its release. Several bookstores in England and America received bomb threats, and the novel was briefly removed from the shelves of America's largest book-selling chains. Two Islamic officials in London, England, were murdered for questioning the correctness of Rushdie's death sentence on a talk show. Many book-burnings were held throughout the world. Rushdie himself, and his possible disguises in hiding, became the subject of many jokes. For example, during the 1990 Academy Awards presentation, which was seen worldwide by an estimated one billion viewers, comedian Billy Crystal (1947–) joked that "the lovely young woman" who usually hands Oscar statuettes to their recipients "is, of course, Salman Rushdie." Working under a death sentence. In 1990 Rushdie released the fantasy (a made-up story) novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories, written for his son by his first marriage. That same year Rushdie publicly embraced Islam and apologized to those offended by the The Satanic Verses. He made several appearances in London bookstores to autograph his newest work. But even after the Ayatollah's death, his successor, Iran's President Hashemi Rafsanzani, refused to lift the death sentence. Rushdie continued to appear in public only occasionally, and then under heavy security. Rushdie continued to live an isolated life. He remarried, however, and became a father for the second time. Occasionally he made radio appearances, but they were usually unannounced. Rushdie's novel entitled The Moor's Last Sigh was published in 1995. This book drew angry reactions from Hindu militants (those engaged in war) in India. In 1998, as part of an attempt to restore relations between Iran and England, the Iranian foreign minister, while repeating criticism of The Satanic Verses, announced that Iran had no intention of harming Rushdie or encouraging anyone to do so. A relieved Rushdie said he would end his nine years of seclusion. In 1999 Rushdie published The Ground Beneath Her Feet, the story of a famous singer lost during an earthquake. Rushdie described it as "a novel of our age" in an interview with CNN's Jonathan Mann. In April 2000 Rushdie created a sensation by visiting India, his first visit to his birthplace since he was four years old. In November 2001 Rushdie told the Manchester Guardian that most Muslims' view of Islam is "jumbled" and "half- examined." He criticized Muslims for blaming "outsiders" for the world's problems and said that they needed to accept the changes in the modern world to truly achieve freedom. For More Information. Cundy, Catherine. Salman Rushdie. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1996. Rushdie, Salman. Conversations with Salman Rushdie. Edited by Michael Reder. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000. Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981–1991. London: Granta Books, 1991. Ruthven, Malise. A Satanic Affair: Salman Rushdie and the Rage of Islam. London: Chatto & Windus, 1990. .by Salman Rushdie ﻏﻀﺐ Can't find what you need? Have questions? Send an email: [email protected] Or call: 714-539-8100. Proud to Specialize In. Arabic Books | Arabic Children Books | Middle East & Islamic Books | Arabic Language Studies Classical and Contemporary Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies | English-Arabic & Arabic-English Dictionaries. Shop With Security - Hosted by Yahoo Small Business. Bringing you the best selections in partnership with Jarirbooksusa. Visit Jarirbooksusa on Social Media. Salman Rushdie. Salman Rushdie (1947–), known as Joseph Anton from 1989 to 1998, is a British-Indian author who is best known for writing a book that seriously ticked off the Islamic world. The Satanic Verses (1988) was deemed anti-Islamic by the Ayatollah Khomeni, who issued a fatwa calling for his death. Due to the threats to his life, he went into hiding in different parts of Europe, surfacing long enough to publish new books, or do quick interviews, or appear onstage with Bono and U2, then head back underground before angry flying books of death strike him down. According to the Irish band, "for a man in hiding, it was remarkably easy to find him." Much of his writing is set in the Indian sub-continent, often dealing with conflicts of religion; however, his range of topics includes a non-fiction study of the politics of Nicaragua and a self-described "alternative" history of rock and roll, The Ground Beneath Her Feet . Rushdie is a feminist, stating "What else is there to be? Everything else is being an asshole." [2] Contents. The Satanic Verses controversy [ edit ] The Satanic Verses , Rushdie's fourth book, attracted worldwide controversy when it was published in 1988, as many Muslims saw it as an insult to Islam. [3] The book's title refers to a controversial incident in early Islamic history, The Satanic Verses — which is one of the reasons why so many Muslims reacted violently to its publication. The Islamic world reacted with its usual level of restraint, i.e. not much, and a fatwa was issued by Iran's then-Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini [3] (a figure directly parodied in the novel, depicted as a mad imam in exile [3] ). In addition to the fatwa, Iranian officials placed a price on Rushdie's head. [4] [note 1] The response in the West was not much better. European-based Muslim groups, such as the Union of Islamic Students' Associations and the Muslim Parliament, were supportive of the fatwa. Even outside of Islam, the picture still didn't improve much. The then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, in the spirit of cross-religion relations, agreed with Muslim demands that Britain's blasphemy laws be modified to include support for Islam. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, the leaders of the UK and the United States respectively, condemned the death threats, but former President Jimmy Carter also joined many others in expressing the view that Rushdie must have known what he was getting into when he wrote the book. [5] Germaine Greer, the noted radical feminist writer, described Rushdie as being "a megalomaniac, an Englishman with dark skin" (even though she herself left the Lucky Country for the Mother Country), equating him to an Islamic equivalent of a "house negro." Roald Dahl, most famous for his children's books, labelled Rushdie "a dangerous opportunist." [6] While '70s wash-up Cat Stevens (aka Yusuf Islam) wanted Rushdie dead [7] but later tried to backpedal, the more musically and socially relevant U2 co-wrote the song "The Ground Beneath Her Feet", [8] based on Rushdie's book of the same name. Some writers, such as Susan Sontag and Christopher Hitchens, offered unequivocal support for Rushdie's right to free speech, but many tended to follow the Carter approach of being unsupportive of the death threats while still blaming Rushdie for insulting Islam. As with creationists' inveighing against "Darwinism" or evolution, and various fundamentalists' condemnation of Harry Potter as demonic, it is likely that most Muslims claiming to be insulted by The Satanic Verses have/had never read it, in whole or in part. As of 2016 the fatwa still stands and yet more money was added to the bounty. [9] Hilariously, most young Muslims have either never heard of his book or care about him. You'd think the Ayatollah would have made the bounty available to everyone if he wanted to keep things going (or maybe he's secretly a spendthrift hoping he'll never need to pay out! How devious!). Rushdie more recently [ edit ] Since then, Rushdie has been knighted and apparently survived an assassination attempt (which killed the Hezbollah terrorist who was priming the bomb). He is also getting bolder. A year or so ago he compared political and militant Islamism to that of the Soviet Empire, and arguing that it was as vulnerable to a collapse. Rushdie has said The Satanic Verses would not be published today because of a climate of intimidation that prevents publication of books critical of Islam; he added that in late summer 2012 Channel 4, a major UK television channel, had cancelled a documentary critical of Islam due to fear. [1] In ‘Languages of Truth,’ Salman Rushdie Defends the Extraordinary. When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. Salman Rushdie has nothing to prove. Yet he finds himself, in his early 70s, deeply out of fashion. Too old to seize a moment, too active to be rediscovered, he’s been subject over the past two decades to some of the unkindest reviews ever delivered to a talent of his magnitude. The magazine Cahiers du Cinéma once had a rating system that included a black dot for “abominable.” If critics could be handing Rushdie these dots, they would be. It has to sting. The rap against Rushdie’s fiction is that it’s become increasingly “magical,” wonder-filled and windy, as if he were typing in turquoise and burnt sienna. His novels are tricked out with genies and tarot cards and magic mirrors and references to things like evil chicken entrails powder and witches and dragon ladies. These productions feel forced: talky, infelicitous and banal. They have no middle gear, and no real humans wander through them. Reading these novels, one begins to feel like the English academic Hugo Dyson who, while J.R.R. Tolkien was reading aloud from an early draft of “The Lord of the Rings,” was heard to comment: “Oh [expletive omitted], not another elf!” In his new book, “Languages of Truth: Essays 2003-2020,” Rushdie attempts to perform a defensive castling move. He suggests his work has been misunderstood and mistreated because the literary culture has turned from brio-filled imaginative writing toward the humbler delights of “autofiction,” as exemplified by the work of Elena Ferrante and Karl Ove Knausgaard. Rushdie fears that writers no longer trust their imaginations, and that the classroom imperative to “write what you know” has led to dullness, angst and dead ends: cold and bony literary mumblecore. There is nothing ordinary about ordinary life, Rushdie writes. Behind closed doors, family existence is “overblown and operatic and monstrous and almost too much to bear; there are mad grandfathers in there, and wicked aunts and corrupt brothers and nymphomaniac sisters.” He praises the “giant belchers” and “breakers of giant winds.” He sees himself as a maximalist in a minimalist world; a wet writer in a dry one; a lover of bric-a- brac in an era of Shaker modesty. He lashes a lot of names to his wagon train, setting his work alongside that of Italo Calvino, Gabriel García Márquez, Günter Grass, Angela Carter, Jorge Luis Borges, Jerzy Kosinski, Jean-Luc Godard and Luis Buñuel, among many other writers and filmmakers. I read Rushdie’s arguments with much interest and little agreement, as Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. used to say. He is fencing with a poorly stuffed straw man. For one thing, there have been autobiographical novels — “David Copperfield” is one — since the form was invented. And if there has been a boomlet in autofiction, it is surely in part an attempt by writers to claw back breathing space from the culture-strangling juggernauts that are Marvel movies and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter universe and George R.R. Martin’s “Game of Thrones.” Fantasy has quite won over America, in nearly every sphere. What’s more, contra Rushdie, we’re in a fat period for deep and sustained invention in literary fiction. Two examples: Among the most revered and popular novels of the past decade are Colson Whitehead’s “The Underground Railroad” and George Saunders’s “Lincoln in the Bardo.” In the first, the metaphorical underground railroad becomes an actual underground railroad . The second is a garrulous ghost story, reality as seen through the eyes of people stuck in an intermediate state between death and rebirth. No lukewarm autobiography here. Much of the rest in “Languages of Truth” is limper and less interesting. The book contains several sleepwalking commencement speeches (“new beginnings, no matter how exciting, also involve loss”), semi-obligatory memorial lectures (“to achieve your dream you leave your safe place”) and the introductions to books and speeches delivered on behalf of PEN America, of which he was president from 2004 to 2006. You no longer quite feel that Salman Rushdie is writing these things, but that “Salman Rushdie” is, in a way that reminds one of John Updike’s observation that “celebrity is a mask that eats into the face.” Rushdie sneaks more humanity into his remembrances of deceased friends, including Harold Pinter, Carrie Fisher and Christopher Hitchens. There’s a fond piece about changing from a Christmas refusenik into a borderline Christmas fundamentalist. There is also an alert essay about the pandemic. Rushdie, who has asthma, came down with a frightening case of Covid early on. People later joked to him that, having survived a fatwa, lockdown should be a breeze. He didn’t find this funny at all. It’s interesting to compare “Languages of Truth” with another book of Rushdie’s nonfiction, “Imaginary Homelands,” published in 1991. It’s a mighty book — one of his three or four best, in my view — a lover’s quarrel with the world of politics and novels and film. Back then Rushdie wrote nonfiction for editors, not for foundations and colleges. He was not a major critic but a strong one, and he wrote exactingly, and not always positively, about writers including John le Carré, Grace Paley and Julian Barnes. He stopped writing reviews almost entirely, he wrote in “Joseph Anton,” his 2012 memoir, because, “If you loved a book, the author thought your praise no more than his rightful due, and if you didn’t like it, you made enemies.” He added: “It’s a mug’s game.” He may be right. But the irritable Rushdie felt like the real one, or at least the wide-awake one. If his arguments about the state of fiction in “Languages of Truth” don’t convince, at least they’re genuine signs of life. Salman Rushdie. Salman Rushdie is a British-Indian novelist. The only son of a University of Cambridge-educated businessman and school teacher in Bombay, Rushdie studied history at King's College at the University of Cambridge. Rushdie's 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), led to accusations of blasphemy against Islam, forcing him to go into hiding for several years. Early Years. Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie was born on June 19, 1947, in Bombay (now Mumbai), India. The only son of a wealthy Indian businessman and a school teacher, Rushdie was educated at a Bombay private school before attending The Rugby School, a boarding school in Warwickshire, England. He went on to attend King's College at the University of Cambridge, where he studied history. After earning his M.A. from Cambridge, Rushdie briefly lived with his family in Pakistan, where his parents had moved in 1964. There, he found work as a television writer but soon returned to England, where for much of the 1970s he worked as a copywriter for an advertising agency. While Rushdie would later become a target of Muslim extremists, the religion was very much a part of his upbringing. His grandfather, a kind man and family doctor, was a devout Muslim, who said his prayers five times a day and went to Hajj to Mecca. But his grandfather's embrace of the religion was not shrouded in intolerance, something that greatly shaped the young Rushdie. "You could sit there as an 11- or 12-year-old boy and say, 'Grandfather, I don't believe in god.' And he would say, 'Really? That's very interesting. Sit down here and tell me all about it.' And there would be no kind of attempt to ram something down your throat or criticize you. There would just be conversation." International Acclaim. In 1975, Rushdie published his first book, Grimus , a fantasy and science fiction novel that received tepid reviews. Undeterred by the response, Rushdie kept writing and his second work, Midnight's Children , proved life altering. Published in 1981, the book, which tells the story of India's complicated history through a pickle-factory worker named Saleem Sinai, was a critical and commercial success. The honors included the Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction). In 1993 and 2008 it was awarded the "Best of the Bookers," a distinction that made it the best novel to have won a Booker Prize for Fiction in the award's 25 and later 40-year history. Rushdie's follow-up, 1983's Shame won the French literary prize, Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, further cementing Rushdie's place among literature's upper echelon. 'The Satanic Verses' In 1988 Rushdie published The Satanic Verses , a novel drenched in magical realism and whose main story was inspired in part by the life of Muhammad. Critics adored it. The book won the Whitbread Award for novel of the year and was a finalist for the Booker Prize. But it also drew immediate condemnation from the Islamic world for what was perceived to be its irreverent account of Muhammad. In many countries with large Muslim populations, the novel was banned and on February 14, 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of Iran, issued a fatwa requiring the author's execution. A bounty was offered for Rushdie's death and for a number of years the writer was forced to live under police protection. To try and dial back the outrage, Rushdie issued a public apology and voiced his support for Islam. The heat around The Satanic Verses eventually cooled and in 1998, Iran declared it would not support the fatwa. In 2012 Rushdie published Joseph Anton: A Memoir , an autobiographical account of what life was like for him during the decade-long fatwa. Recent Years. Even at the height of the controversy surrounding his famous novel, Rushdie continued to write. In all, he's written eleven novels, as well as a pair of children's books and published several collections of essays and works of non-fiction. Rushdie's 12th novel, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights was published in September 2015. Overall, his books have been translated into more than 40 languages. Rushdie's litany of honors and awards are considerable, including honorary doctorates and fellowships at six European and six American universities. In 2007 Queen Elizabeth II knighted him. In 2014 Rushdie was awarded the PEN/Pinter Prize. Established in memory of the late Nobel-Laureate playwright Harold Pinter, the annual award honors a British writer for their body of work. Rushdie has also maintained a fiery tongue and pen. He's been a fierce defender of freedom of expression and was a frequent critic of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. In 2008 he publicly regretted his embrace of Islam in the wake of the criticism of The Satanic Verses . "It was deranged thinking," he said. "I was more off-balance than I ever have been, but you can't imagine the pressure I was under. I simply thought I was making a statement of fellowship. As soon as I said it, I felt as if I had ripped my own tongue out." Rushdie has been married four times and is the father of two sons, Zafar (b. 1979) and Milan (b. 1997). Fact Check. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!