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Salman Rushdie Born in Bombay, India, Salman Rushdie is the acclaimed author of ten novels—Grimus, Midnight’s Children (Booker Prize, 1981; “Best of the Booker” award, 2008, for the best novel to have won the prize in its first 40 years), Shame, The Satanic Verses, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, The Moor’s Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Fury, Shalimar the Clown, and The Enchantress of Florence—and one book of stories, East, West, as well as three works of nonfiction—Imaginary Homelands, The Jaguar Smile, and Step Across This Line. His stage adaptation of Midnight’s Children was performed in London and New York by the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 2004 an opera based upon Haroun and the Sea of Stories premiered at New York City Opera. A Fellow of the British Royal Society of Literature and a member
of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Salman Rushdie has
received, among other awards, the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel
(twice), the European Union’s Aristeion Prize for Literature,
Author of the Year prizes in both Britain and Germany, the Budapest
Grand Prize for Literature, the Premio Grinzane Cavour in Italy,
and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature, as well as
the Freedom of the City in Mexico City, Strasbourg, and El Paso,
and the Edgerton Prize of the American Civil Liberties Union. He
holds the rank of Commandeur in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres,
France’s highest artistic honor. From 2004 to 2006 he served
as President of PEN American Center, and continues to work as president
of the PEN World Voices International Literary Festival, which
he helped create. In June 2007 he was knighted for services to
literature. His books have been translated into more than 40 languages.
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