Books by Salman Rushdie
Born: 06/19/1947Salman Rushdie Biography & Notes
Salman Rushdie (born June 19, 1947, in Bombay, India) is an essayist and author of fiction, most of which is set on the Indian subcontinent. He grew up in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) and then graduated with honours from King's College, Cambridge in England. His narrative style, blending myth and fantasy with real life, has been described as connected with magical realism. Rushdie recently married prominent Indian.
His writing career began with Grimus, a fantastic tale, part-science fiction, which was generally ignored by the book-buying public and literary critics. His next novel, Midnight's Children, however, catapulted him to literary fame and is considered his best work to date. It also significantly shaped the course Indian writing in English was to follow over the next decade. This work was later awarded the 'Booker of Bookers' prize in 1993 � being the best novel to be awarded the Booker Prize in its first 25 years. After the success of Midnight's Children, Rushdie wrote a short novel, Shame, where he depicts the political turmoil in Pakistan by basing his characters on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and General Zia ul-Haq. Both these works are characterised by, apart from the style of magical realism, the immigrant outlook of which Rushdie is so very conscious.
Rushdie is also highly influenced by modern literature. Midnight's Children borrows themes from G�nter Grass's novel The Tin Drum, which Rushdie claims inspired him to begin writing. The Satanic Verses is also clearly influenced by Mikhail Bulgakov's classic Russian novel The Master and Margarita.
India and Pakistan were the themes, respectively, of Midnight's Children and Shame. In his later works, Rushdie turned towards the Western world with The Moor's Last Sigh, exploring commercial and cultural links between India and the Iberian peninsula, and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, in which the influence of American rock 'n' roll on India plays a role. Midnight's Children receives accolades for being Rushdie's best, most flowing and inspiring work, but none of Rushdie's post-1989 works has had the same critical reception or caused the same controversy as The Satanic Verses.
Rushdie received many other awards for his writings including the European Union's Aristeion Prize for Literature. He is also a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres.
The publication of The Satanic Verses in 1989 caused controversy in the Fundamentalist Muslim world, due to its irreverent depiction of the prophet Muhammad. On February 14, 1989, a fatwa promising his execution was placed on him by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran, calling his book "blasphemous against Islam". Furthermore, Khomeini condemned Rushdie for the crime of "apostasy" � i.e. attempting to abandon the Islamic faith � which according to the Hadith is punishable by death. This was due to Rushdie's communication through the novel that he no longer believes in Islam. Khomeini called on all "zealous Muslims" to execute the writer, as well as those of the publishers of the book who knew about the concepts of the book. On February 24 Khomeini then placed a three-million-US dollar bounty for the death of Rushdie. Rushdie lived for a time under British-financed security.
During this period, violent protests in India, Pakistan, and Egypt caused several deaths. Muslim communities throughout the world held public rallies in which copies of the book were burned. In 1990 Rushdie published an essay In Good Faith to appease his critics and issued an apology in which he seems to have reaffirmed his respect for Islam. However, Iranian clerics did not retract the fatwa.
Rushdie's notorious friendships with occult groups and group members such as Anton LaVey and book shows at popular occult gatherings has linked him to occult activity. In various interviews Rushdie has professed to practicing occcult activites including alchemy. This seemed to only fuel the fire of media and critics. His accusations and critical comments regarding the fatwa later made him a marked man in the Muslim community. Rushdie has made statements to defend his book but still many in the Muslim community consider him a wanted man. Famous people in the Muslim community stepped out in defense of their Muslim faith to protect their image.
Even popular musician Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens) indirectly yet infamously stated his agreement with the fatwa. But later in 1989, Yusuf Islam said in a British television documentary that he wasn't against the death sentence in principle: Rather than go to a demonstration where Rushdie would be burned in effigy, "I would have hoped that it'd be the real thing" he said. If Rushdie showed up at his door, he said he "might ring somebody who might do more damage to him than he would like... I'd try to phone the Ayatollah Khomeini and tell him exactly where this man is." The New York Times reported that he stood by his statements in a subsequent interview. [1] (http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/04/18/specials/rushdie-cat.html)
The novel had been banned in India and South Africa and burned on the streets of some Arab neighborhoods in England. At the University of California, Berkeley, bookstores carrying the book were firebombed. In 1991 the Japanese translator was murdered and in 1993 Rushdie's Norwegian publisher was wounded in an attack outside his house. In 1997 the bounty was doubled, and the next year (before the Iran-UK agreement) the highest Iranian state prosecutor restated his support.
After the death of Khomeini, the Iranian Government publicly committed itself in 1998 not to carry out the death sentence against Rushdie. This was agreed to in the context of a larger deal between Iran and the UK to normalise relations. Rushdie afterward declared that he would stop living in hiding. Some believe that the fatwa died with the Ayatolla, but some fundamentalist Islamic media allegedly stated:
"The responsibility for carrying out the fatwa is not the exclusive responsibility of Iran. It is the religious duty of all Muslims � those who have the ability or the means � to carry it out. It does not require any reward. In fact, those who carry out this edict in hopes of a monetary reward are acting against Islamic injunctions."
In 1999 an Iranian foundation put a 2.8M USD bounty on Rushdie's head.
His writing career began with Grimus, a fantastic tale, part-science fiction, which was generally ignored by the book-buying public and literary critics. His next novel, Midnight's Children, however, catapulted him to literary fame and is considered his best work to date. It also significantly shaped the course Indian writing in English was to follow over the next decade. This work was later awarded the 'Booker of Bookers' prize in 1993 � being the best novel to be awarded the Booker Prize in its first 25 years. After the success of Midnight's Children, Rushdie wrote a short novel, Shame, where he depicts the political turmoil in Pakistan by basing his characters on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and General Zia ul-Haq. Both these works are characterised by, apart from the style of magical realism, the immigrant outlook of which Rushdie is so very conscious.
Rushdie is also highly influenced by modern literature. Midnight's Children borrows themes from G�nter Grass's novel The Tin Drum, which Rushdie claims inspired him to begin writing. The Satanic Verses is also clearly influenced by Mikhail Bulgakov's classic Russian novel The Master and Margarita.
India and Pakistan were the themes, respectively, of Midnight's Children and Shame. In his later works, Rushdie turned towards the Western world with The Moor's Last Sigh, exploring commercial and cultural links between India and the Iberian peninsula, and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, in which the influence of American rock 'n' roll on India plays a role. Midnight's Children receives accolades for being Rushdie's best, most flowing and inspiring work, but none of Rushdie's post-1989 works has had the same critical reception or caused the same controversy as The Satanic Verses.
Rushdie received many other awards for his writings including the European Union's Aristeion Prize for Literature. He is also a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres.
The publication of The Satanic Verses in 1989 caused controversy in the Fundamentalist Muslim world, due to its irreverent depiction of the prophet Muhammad. On February 14, 1989, a fatwa promising his execution was placed on him by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran, calling his book "blasphemous against Islam". Furthermore, Khomeini condemned Rushdie for the crime of "apostasy" � i.e. attempting to abandon the Islamic faith � which according to the Hadith is punishable by death. This was due to Rushdie's communication through the novel that he no longer believes in Islam. Khomeini called on all "zealous Muslims" to execute the writer, as well as those of the publishers of the book who knew about the concepts of the book. On February 24 Khomeini then placed a three-million-US dollar bounty for the death of Rushdie. Rushdie lived for a time under British-financed security.
During this period, violent protests in India, Pakistan, and Egypt caused several deaths. Muslim communities throughout the world held public rallies in which copies of the book were burned. In 1990 Rushdie published an essay In Good Faith to appease his critics and issued an apology in which he seems to have reaffirmed his respect for Islam. However, Iranian clerics did not retract the fatwa.
Rushdie's notorious friendships with occult groups and group members such as Anton LaVey and book shows at popular occult gatherings has linked him to occult activity. In various interviews Rushdie has professed to practicing occcult activites including alchemy. This seemed to only fuel the fire of media and critics. His accusations and critical comments regarding the fatwa later made him a marked man in the Muslim community. Rushdie has made statements to defend his book but still many in the Muslim community consider him a wanted man. Famous people in the Muslim community stepped out in defense of their Muslim faith to protect their image.
Even popular musician Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens) indirectly yet infamously stated his agreement with the fatwa. But later in 1989, Yusuf Islam said in a British television documentary that he wasn't against the death sentence in principle: Rather than go to a demonstration where Rushdie would be burned in effigy, "I would have hoped that it'd be the real thing" he said. If Rushdie showed up at his door, he said he "might ring somebody who might do more damage to him than he would like... I'd try to phone the Ayatollah Khomeini and tell him exactly where this man is." The New York Times reported that he stood by his statements in a subsequent interview. [1] (http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/04/18/specials/rushdie-cat.html)
The novel had been banned in India and South Africa and burned on the streets of some Arab neighborhoods in England. At the University of California, Berkeley, bookstores carrying the book were firebombed. In 1991 the Japanese translator was murdered and in 1993 Rushdie's Norwegian publisher was wounded in an attack outside his house. In 1997 the bounty was doubled, and the next year (before the Iran-UK agreement) the highest Iranian state prosecutor restated his support.
After the death of Khomeini, the Iranian Government publicly committed itself in 1998 not to carry out the death sentence against Rushdie. This was agreed to in the context of a larger deal between Iran and the UK to normalise relations. Rushdie afterward declared that he would stop living in hiding. Some believe that the fatwa died with the Ayatolla, but some fundamentalist Islamic media allegedly stated:
"The responsibility for carrying out the fatwa is not the exclusive responsibility of Iran. It is the religious duty of all Muslims � those who have the ability or the means � to carry it out. It does not require any reward. In fact, those who carry out this edict in hopes of a monetary reward are acting against Islamic injunctions."
In 1999 an Iranian foundation put a 2.8M USD bounty on Rushdie's head.
Suggestions or corrections for the editor? Click here.
|
Adhi Rata Ki Santanem by Salman Rushdie, Priyadarsana ( 2004) |
|
|
An American Index Of The Hidden And Unfamiliar by ( 2007) |
|
The Baburnama Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor by Wheeler M. Thackston, Babur ( 2002)
Both an official chronicle and the highly personal memoir of the emperor Babur (1483–1530), The Baburnama presents a vivid and extraordinarily detailed picture of life in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India during the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries. Babur’s honest and intimate chronicle is the first autobiography in Islamic literature, written at a time when there was no historical precedent for a personal narrative—now in a sparkling new translation by Islamic scholar Wheeler Thackston.
This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition includes notes, indices, maps, and illustrations. |
|
The Best American Short Stories 2008 by ( 2008)
The acclaimed annual short fiction series--this year featuring guest editor Salman Rushdie, author of
|
|
|
Burning Your Boats The Collected Short Stories by Angela Carter ( 1996)
From early reflections on jazz and Japan, through vigorous refashionings of vampires and werewolves, to stunning snapshots of real-life outcasts and the glorious but tainted world of "the rich and famous", this complete collection of Angela Carter's short stories gathers together four published books - Fireworks, The Bloody Chamber, Black Venus, American Ghosts and Old World Wonders - with her early work and uncollected stories.
|
|
|
Conversations With Salman Rushdie by Salman Rushdie ( 2000) |
|
Die Satanischen Verse by Salman Rushdie ( 1997) |
|
East, West Stories by Salman Rushdie ( 1996)
From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Satanic Verses comes nine stories that reveal the oceanic distances and the unexpected intimacies between East and West. Daring, extravagant, comical and humane, this book renews Rushdie's stature as a storyteller who can enthrall and instruct us with the same sentence.
|
|
The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie ( 2009)
Booker Prize-winner Sir Salman Rushdie allows his fantastical tendencies full reign in his sprawling and whimsical ENCHANTRESS OF FLORENCE, a literary riff on the THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS. By setting his tale in Florence when the Italian town was ruled by the Akbar Empire, Rushdie allows himself to possess the entirety of both Western and Eastern culture, and his novel includes Persian princesses and European knights alike. Familiar historical figures such as Machiavelli make appearances, as does Vlad the Impaler, and the book churns itself into a stew of styles, fairy tales, and cultural and literary allusion.
|
|
Furia/ Fury by Salman Rushdie ( 2003) |
|
Fury A Novel by Salman Rushdie ( 2002)
Malik Solanka, historian of ideas and world-famous dollmaker, steps out of his life one day, abandons his family in London without a word of explanation, and flees for New York. There's a fury within him, and he fears he has become dangerous to those he loves. He arrives in New York at a time of unprecedented plenty, in the highest hour of America's wealth and power, seeking to "erase" himself. But fury is all around him.
Fury is a work of explosive energy, at once a pitiless and pitch-black comedy, a profoundly disturbing inquiry into the darkest side of human nature, and a love story of mesmerizing force. It is also an astonishing portrait of New York. Not since the Bombay of Midnight's Children have a time and place been so intensely and accurately captured in a novel. |
|
Global Lab by Salman Rushdie, Barbara Frischmuth, Bert Fragner ( 2009) |
|
Grimus A Novel by Salman Rushdie ( 2003)
After drinking an elixir that bestows him with immortality, a young Indian named Flapping Eagle spends the next 700 years sailing the seas with the burden of living forever. Eventually he grows weary of the sameness of life and journeys to the mountainous Calf Island to regain his mortality. There he meets other immortals obsessed with their own stasis and he sets out to scale the island’s peak, from which the mysterious and corrosive Grimus Effect emits. Through a series of thrilling quests and encounters, Flapping Eagle comes face to face with the island’s creator and unwinds the mysteries of his own humanity.
|
|
The Ground Beneath Her Feet A Novel by Salman Rushdie ( 2000)
Photographer Rai narrates the epic romance between his childhood friend, Ormus Cama, and singer Vina Apsara, Rai's sometime lover, revealingwith wisdom and humora world of passions, truths, death, and rock 'n' roll.
|
|
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie ( 1991)
The author of The Satanic Verses returns with his most humorous and accessible novel yet. This is the story of Haroun, a 12-year-old boy whose father Rashid is the greatest storyteller in a city so sad that it has forgotten its name. When the gift of gab suddenly deserts Rashid, Haroun sets out on an adventure to rescue his print.
|
|
Hijos de la medianoche/ Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie ( 2009)
The life of a man born at the moment of India's independence becomes inextricably linked to that of his nation and is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirror modern India's course.
|
|
Imaginary Homelands Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991 by Salman Rushdie ( 1992)
Rushdie at his most candid, impassioned, and incisive--an important and moving record of one writer's intellectual and personal odyssey. These 75 essays demonstrate Rushdie's range and prophetic vision, as he focuses on his fellow writers, on films, and on the mine-strewn ground of race, politics and religion.
|
|
In Good Faith by Salman Rushdie ( 1990) |
|
|
Is Nothing Sacred? by Salman Rushdie ( 1990) |
|
|
The Jaguar Smile A Nicaraguan Journey by Salman Rushdie ( 2008)
The author of
|
|
La Sonrisa del Jaguar/ The Smile of the Jaguar by Salman Rushdie ( 2006) |
|
|
La encantadora de Florencia/ The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie ( 2009)
The best-selling author of Midnight's Children presents the story of one woman attempting to command her own destiny in a man's world, in a novel that brings together two distant cities--the hedonistic Mughal capital ruled by the brilliant Akbar the Great, and Niccolò Machiavelli's Florence during the High Renaissance.
|
|
El Mago De Oz by Salman Rushdie ( 2006) |
|
|
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie ( 1995)
The author of The Stananic Verses creates a fascinating family saga about the birth and maturity of a land and its people--a brilliant incarnation of the human comedy. "Rushdie has achieved a magnificent and unique work of fiction".--The Philadelphia Inquirer.
|
|
Mirrorwork 50 Years of Indian Writing 1947-1997 by ( 1997)
Includes contributions by Gita Mehta, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Anita Desai, Salman Rushdie, Satyajit Ray, Sara Suleri, and Bapsi Sidhwa.
|
|
Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie ( 1997)
Time Magazine's Best Book of the YearBooker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie combines a ferociously witty family saga with a surreally imagined and sometimes blasphemous chronicle of modern India and flavors the mixture with peppery soliloquies on art, ethnicity, religious fanaticism, and the terrifying power of love. Moraes "Moor" Zogoiby, the last surviving scion of a dynasty of Cochinese spice merchants and crime lords, is also a compulsive storyteller and an exile. As he travels a route that takes him from India to Spain, he leaves behind a tale of mad passions and volcanic family hatreds, of titanic matriarchs and their mesmerized offspring, of premature deaths and curses that strike beyond the grave. "Fierce, phantasmagorical...a huge, sprawling, exuberant novel."--New York Times
|
|
Narrative Desire And Historical Reparations A.s. Byatt, Ian Mcewan, And Salman Rushdie by A. S. Byatt, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Timothy Guathier ( 2005) This book examines and explains the obsession with history in the contemporary British novel. It frames these "historical" novels as expressions of narrative desire, highlighting the reciprocal relationship between a desire to disclose and to rid ourselves of anxieties elicited by the past. Scrutinizing representative novels from Byatt, McEwan and Rushdie, contemporary fiction is revealed as capable of advocating a viable ethical stance and as a form of authentic commentary. Our anxieties often exist in response to what might be perceived as the oppression or eradication of values, whether this is through the modern repudiation of Victorian principles (Byatt), the Western rethinking of Enlightenment narratives in light of the Holocaust (McEwan), or pluralism threatened by religious fundamentalism (Rushdie). Each of these novelists differentially employs postmodern artifice, sometimes as a way to reject the notion of historical construction, sometimes to advocate for it, but always to bring us closer to what |
|
Oriente, Occidente/ East, West by Salman Rushdie ( 2006) |
|
|
Pasate De La Raya/ Step Across This Line Articulos, 1992-2002/ Essays, 1992-2002 by Salman Rushdie ( 2003) |
|
The Price of Free Speech by William Nygaard ( 1996) |
|
|
Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, Simon Reade, Tim Supple ( 2003)
The original stage adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, winner of the 1993 Booker of Bookers, the best book to win the Booker Prize in its first twenty-five years.
In the moments of upheaval that surround the stroke of midnight on August 14--15, 1947, the day India proclaimed its independence from Great Britain, 1,001 children are born--each of whom is gifted with supernatural powers. Midnight’s Children focuses on the fates of two of them--the illegitimate son of a poor Hindu woman and the male heir of a wealthy Muslim family--who become inextricably linked when a midwife switches the boys at birth. An allegory of modern India, Midnight’s Children is a family saga set against the volatile events of the thirty years following the country’s independence--the partitioning of India and Pakistan, the rule of Indira Gandhi, the onset of violence and war, and the imposition of martial law. It is a magical and haunting tale, of fragmentation and of the struggle for identity and belonging that links personal life with national history. In collaboration with Simon Reade, Tim Supple and the Royal Shakespeare Society, Salman Rushdie has adapted his masterpiece for the stage. |
|
Samuel Beckett by Paul Auster, Samuel Beckett ( 2006) |
|
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie ( 1989)
Just before dawn one winter's morning, a hijacked jumbo jet blows apart high above the English Channel. Two figures fall to the sea, later washing up, alive, on a beach. It was an ambiguous miracle, for both seem to have acquired curious changes. Both have been chosen as opponents in the eternal wrestling match between Good and Evil.
|
|
Sebastiao Salgado Territoires Et Vies by Salman Rushdie, Bibliotheque Nationale De France, Anne Biroleau, Dominique Versavel ( 2005) |
|
|
Shalimar El Payaso by Salman Rushdie ( 2007) |
|
|
Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie ( 2006)
In 1991, Ambassador Maximilian Ophuls--a World War II Resistance hero, ex-ambassador to India, and America's counterterrorism chief--is murdered on the Los Angeles doorstep of his illegitimate daughter India's home by his Kashmiri Muslim driver, who calls himself Shalimar the clown, in a sweeping story of love and revenge in a troubled age. Reprint. 75,000 first printing.
|
|
Shame by Salman Rushdie ( 2008)
The author's third novel chronicles the epic duel played out between two men, one a great warrior, the other an infamous playboy, against the backdrop of a country "not quite Pakistan." Reprint. 15,000 first printing.
|
|
Soldiers Three and in Black and White by Rudyard Kipling, Salman Rushdie ( 1993) |
|
|
Step Across This Line Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002 by Salman Rushdie ( 2002)
“Step Across This Line is a moral tonic ... A book about freedom, its glories and its costs.” -- The Globe and Mail
“A beacon of sanity… In an age of religious fanatics, patriotic zealots and self-righteous leftists, Salman Rushdie champions free thinking and fun.” -- Salon.com “Salman Rushdie is a storyteller of prodigious powers, able to conjure up whole geographies, causalities, climates, creatures, customs, out of thin air.” -- The New York Times Book Review From the Trade Paperback edition. |
|
Step Across This Line Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002 by Salman Rushdie ( 2003)
For all their permeability, the borders snaking across the world have never been of greater importance. This is the dance of history in our age: slow, slow, quick, quick, slow, back and forth and from side to side, we step across these fixed and shifting lines. —from Part IV
With astonishing range and depth, the essays, speeches, and opinion pieces assembled in this book chronicle a ten-year intellectual odyssey by one of the most important, creative, and respected minds of our time. Step Across This Line concentrates in one volume Salman Rushdie’s fierce intelligence, uncanny social commentary, and irrepressible wit—about soccer, The Wizard of Oz, and writing, about fighting the Iranian fatwa and turning with the millennium, and about September 11, 2001. Ending with the eponymous, never-before-published speeches, this collection is, in Rushdie’s words, a “wake-up call” about the way we live, and think, now. |
|
El Ultimo Suspiro Del Moro by Salman Rushdie ( 1995) |
|
|
Verguenza/ Embarrassment by Salman Rushdie ( 2006) |
|
|
The Wizard of Oz by Salman Rushdie ( 1992)
The author briefly recounts the making of "The Wizard of Oz" and discusses its plot, music, and themes.
|
|
El ultimo suspiro del Moro / The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie ( 2005) |
|
Los versos satanicos / The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie ( 2004) |
