Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, typically 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.
Midnight's Children is a 1981 novel by Indian-British writer Salman Rushdie, published by Jonathan Cape with cover design by Bill Botten, about India's transition from British colonial rule to independence and partition. It is a postcolonial, postmodern and magical realist story told by its chief protagonist, Saleem Sinai, set in the context of historical events. The style of preserving history with fictional accounts is self-reflexive.
The Satanic Verses is the fourth novel of British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie. First published in September 1988, the book was inspired by the life of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. As with his previous books, Rushdie used magical realism and relied on contemporary events and people to create his characters. The title refers to the Satanic Verses, a group of Quranic verses about three pagan Meccan goddesses: Allāt, Al-Uzza, and Manāt. The part of the story that deals with the satanic verses was based on accounts from the historians al-Waqidi and al-Tabari.
Amitava Kumar is an Indian writer and journalist who is Professor of English, holding the Helen D. Lockwood Chair at Vassar College.
Tahar Djaout was an Algerian journalist, poet, and fiction writer. He was assassinated in 1993 by the Armed Islamic Group.
Hitoshi Igarashi was a Japanese scholar of Arabic and Persian literature and history and the Japanese translator of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses. He was murdered in the wake of fatwas issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran – who, by the time of Igarashi's murder, had died – calling for the death of the book's author and "those involved in its publication." His murder remains unsolved.
William Nygaard is the retired head of the Norwegian publishing company Aschehoug. He was also chairman of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. He has two children.
Kalim Siddiqui, Ph.D. was a Pakistani British writer and Islamic activist. He gained notability for his controversial support of the fatwa issued by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, which called for the assassination of British author Sir Salman Rushdie amidst the Satanic Verses controversy.
Marianne Wiggins is an American author. According to The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English, Wiggins writes with "a bold intelligence and an ear for hidden comedy." She has won a Whiting Award, an National Endowment for the Arts award and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 2004 for her novel Evidence of Things Unseen.
The Satanic Verses controversy, also known as the Rushdie Affair, was a controversy sparked by the 1988 publication of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses. It centered on the novel's references to the Satanic Verses, and came to include a larger debate about censorship and religious violence. It included numerous killings, attempted killings, and bombings by perpetrators who supported Islam.
Following Ayatollah Khomeini's 14 February 1989 death fatwa against author Salman Rushdie, after the publication of Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses, Yusuf Islam, made statements endorsing the killing of Rushdie. His statements generated criticism from commentators in the West.
The Jaipur Literature Festival, or JLF, is an annual literary festival which takes place in the Indian city of Jaipur each year in the month of January. It was founded in 2006.
Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian lawyer, human rights activist and writer. He co-founded the award-winning Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq in 1979. In 2008, he won the Orwell Prize, a British award for political writing, for his book Palestinian Walks.
Richard Webster was a British author. His five published books deal with subjects such as the controversy over Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses (1988), Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis, and the investigation of sexual abuse in Britain. Born in Newington, Kent, Webster studied English literature at the University of East Anglia and lived in Oxford, England. He became interested in the problem of false allegations partly due to reading the work of historian Norman Cohn.
Rachel Kushner is an American writer, known for her novels Telex from Cuba (2008), The Flamethrowers (2013), and The Mars Room (2018).
A Brief History of Blasphemy: Liberalism, Censorship and the Satanic Verses is a 1990 book by Richard Webster, in which the author discusses the controversy over Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses (1988). Webster critiques the freedom to blaspheme, and argues against The Crime of Blasphemy.
The Tailor of Panama is a 1996 novel by British writer John le Carré. A 2001 film was released based on the novel.
Frances Coady is a veteran British publisher. who started Vintage paperbacks in the UK before moving to New York as the publisher of Picador, where she is now a literary agent at the Aragi agency.
The 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the French author Annie Ernaux "for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory". It was announced by the Swedish Academy on 6 October 2022. Ernaux was the 16th French writer – the first Frenchwoman – and the 17th female author, to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
On August 12, 2022, novelist Salman Rushdie was stabbed multiple times as he was about to give a public lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York, United States. A 24-year-old suspect, Hadi Matar, was arrested directly and charged the following day with assault and attempted murder. Rushdie was gravely wounded and hospitalized. Interviewer Henry Reese was also injured by the attacker.
