Salman Rushdie is an author, novelist, essayist and sometime critic. He was born in Bombay (Mumbai) in 1947 and currently lives in New York City. His breakthrough novel was Midnight’s Children, which won the Booker Prize in 1981, The Booker of Bookers in 1993 and The Best of the Booker in 2008. He attained some notoriety after the publication of Satanic Verses in 1989 when Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa prompting death threats from Muslin extremists. Many people (including myself), believe Rushdie’s essays are finer than much of his fiction.
Yes, this is about Islam Rushdie’s NYT Op-Ed on politicized Islam post-Sep 11.
Topics
- Rushdie’s published works, arranged chronologically by date of publication.
- Interviews with Rushdie and literary criticism
- Other pages on Rushdie
- Quotations from Rushdie’s writing and speeches
- Free speech links and information on the fatwa
- Bibliography of published articles and books on Rushdie.
- Glossary of colloquialisms Rushdie has employed in his books.
- Help for those writing essays on Rushdie
Salman Rushdie’s Published works
- 1975: Grimus
- 1980: Midnight’s Children
- 1983: Shame
- 1985: The Painter and the Pest (documentary film)
- 1987: The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey
- 1987: The Riddle of Midnight (documentary film) – ([VHS] at Amazon.com
)
- 1989: The Satanic Verses
- 1990: Haroun and the Sea of Stories
- 1991: Imaginary homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991
- 1992: The Wizard of Oz
- 1994: East, West
- 1995: The Moor’s Last Sigh
- 1997: The Vintage Book of Indian Writing (1947 – 1997) (anthology, edited jointly with Elizabeth West)
- 1999: The Ground Beneath her Feet
- 2001: Fury (Amazon.com page on Fury
)
- 2002: Step Across this Line (Buy it at Amazon.com
)
- 2006: Shalimar the Clown (Buy it at Amazon.com
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- 2009: The Enchantress of Florence (Buy it at Amazon.com
)
Further information on Salman Rushdie
- New York Times special feature on Rushdie has reviews of practically all the novels and NYT stories on the Rushdie affair.
- Salon’s numerous stories on Rushdie include some absolute gems:
- A beacon of sanity a rumination on Rushdie’s non-fiction after reading Step across this line
- A New York state of mind the 2002 interview.
- When life becomes a bad novel an interview after Rushdie had finished writing The Moor’s Last Sigh in the US.
- A touch of Vulgarity the interview after The Ground Beneath Her Feet was published.
- An interview conducted by Peter Kadzis in May 1999. From The Boston Phoenix.
- An article describing Rushdie’s visit to India in 2000.
- David Cronenberg interviews Salman Rushdie.
- Rushdie mailing list at USF
- Imaginative Maps: excerpts from a conversation with Salman Rushdie, and Writing the Raj away: by Una Chaudhuri from TURNSTILE.
- SASIALIT: the South Asian Literature mailing list.
- Rushdie’s Un-Indian Music: The Ground Beneath Her Feet Christopher Rollason’s essay
- Interview with Rushdie, in Dutch, from De Groene Amsterdammer.
- Rushdie’s profile of Gandhi in Time
- Bombay: Gateway of India – Rushdie’s Bombay can be a bit abstract for a reader, Raghubir Singh’s fantastic pictures can help realize some of the description.
- A digest of stories about Rushdie in the French press
- The Rings of Growth, Kalpish Ratna’s review of Step Across this Line.
- Review of Rushdie interview with Internet Talk Radio, the audio clip of the interview itself has been removed from the server.
- Death, Mutilation and Rebirth: The Migrant fiction of Salman Rushdie, Jason R. D’Cruz
- The Rushdie Phenomenon: A Second Look, an essay by C.J.S. Wallia
- CBC has a couple of wonderful interviews with Rushdie on thier archive: Peter Gzowski: 1983, Eleanor Wachtel: 1999
- A spate of posts on Rushdie, I’ve written to various Usenet newsgroups and mailing lists. Some of the posts are in response to reviews of Rushdie’s work.
Free speech links and information on the fatwa
- Mis/representations of Islam, Salman Rushdie and the ‘Rushdie Affair’ an essay by Ismail Isa Patel
- Salman Rushdie and the Misrepresentation of Islam an essay by Ismail Patel
- Terrorism: The Tehran connection, article in Time magazine, March 21, 1994
- Marketing Satanic Verses, “Publicity by Infamy”
- The Price of Oil, The Price of Life a commentary on the “resolution” of the Rushdie Affair.
- Salman Rushdie’s letter to Tasleema Nasreen
- MSANEWS FEMINISM: news reports concerning Tasleema Nasreen.
- BANGLADESH: Death to the author, article on Tasleema Nasreen in Time magazine, August 15, 1994
- Ninth anniversary of fatwa against Salman an action alert at The International Freedom of Expression eXchange
- Rushdie stuns audience 26-100, article in MIT’s The Tech concerning Rushdie’s surprise visit to MIT.
- Satanic Verses is libel against Islam, article in MIT’s The Tech
- Statement from Rushdie Defense Comittee, written by Don DeLillo and Paul Auster in Feb 1994
- The Iranian magazine
- Various State department reports mention the Rushdie affair, including the Patterns of Global Terrorism series from 1993 and 1994
Other Salman Rushdie pages
- The Wikipedia entry for Salman Rushdie.
- The British Council’s contemporary writers project has a page on Rushdie
- KCRW has a couple of<interviews with Rushdie
- Random House have a new website for Rushdie to mark the publication of Fury.
- George Landow’s hypertext project has a set of pages devoted to Salman Rushdie, criticism, reviews, background information, well organized and seamless hyper-text.
- Short note on Rushdie’s references to Borges
- Section on Rushdie in the journal Commonwealth
- A Rushdie page for French readers
Quotations from Rushdie
“I don’t think there is a need for an entity like God in my life.” — From an interview with David Frost.
“What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it cease to exist.” — From The Swedish “Censorship” Homepage
“I do not envy people who think they have a complete explanation of the world, for the simple reason that they are obviously wrong.” –From an interview with David Frost (PBS)