Salon.com > Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie: Artists are more vulnerable than ever

Wed, 01 May 2013 21:02:00 +0000

PERHAPS TO HIS DISMAY, the prolific novelist and essayist Salman Rushdie may be best known for the fatwa Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued against him for his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988). He is, of course, more than a once-persecuted writer. Mr. Rushdie is the author of 11 novels, three collections of essays (one co-written), two children’s books, one book of nonfiction, numerous essays, and most recently Joseph Anton: A Memoir. A man of many accolades, he is a public intellectual, a father, a citizen, a man.

Salman Rushdie writes NYT op-ed on “political courage”

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 14:54:00 +0000

In an op-ed for the New York Times, author Salman Rushdie wonders why "physical bravery" has come to trump "moral courage" in the eyes of the public. "It’s a vexing time for those of us who believe in the right of artists, intellectuals and ordinary, affronted citizens to push boundaries and take risks and so, at times, to change the way we see the world," Rushdie writes.

From the op-ed:

It’s harder for us to see politicians, with the exception of Nelson Mandela and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, as courageous these days. Perhaps we have seen too much, grown too cynical about the inevitable compromises of power. There are no Gandhis, no Lincolns anymore. One man’s hero (Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro) is another’s villain. We no longer easily agree on what it means to be good, or principled, or brave. When political leaders do take courageous steps — as France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, then president, did in Libya by intervening militarily to support the uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi — there are as many who doubt as approve. Political courage, nowadays, is almost always ambiguous.

Exclusive “Midnight’s Children” clip: Saleem loses his innocence

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 14:40:00 +0000

"Midnight's Children" is a rare screen adaptation of Salman Rushdie's literary work -- and one that the Booker Prize-winning novelist co-wrote himself.

The film was laborious to complete: Rushdie told Salon that the process of getting around protestors motivated by his since-ended fatwa from Iran's Ayatollah made him feel "like the end of 'Argo'" when he finally departed the Sri Lanka set. The struggle was ironic, considering that "Midnight's Children" tells an allegorical story of the birth of India, and the eventual strife between Hindu and Muslim on the subcontinent.

Salman Rushdie, screenwriter: Getting around protesters “was like the end of ‘Argo’”

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:55:00 +0000

Salman Rushdie is a man at liberty.

The fatwa placed on him by Iran long since having been lifted, the novelist is trying new things, from last year's memoir "Joseph Anton" to the upcoming film adaptation of "Midnight's Children," his Booker Prize-winning novel. Rushdie wrote the script for "Midnight's Children" along with director Deepa Mehta, and also narrates the film, which is to be released May 3. But that doesn't mean he isn't still causing controversy.

The fallout from "The Satanic Verses," which brought the ire of Iran, led to a shooting delay that could have jeopardized the entire film.

"Midnight's Children" isn't even about Iran -- it takes on the story of India's history, from the moment of independence to the Partition between India and Pakistan -- an element that Rushdie claims is the book's greatest legacy, educating Indian Hindus and Pakistani Muslims about one another.

The novel is a massive tome -- and it was clearly difficult to winnow down into a film that runs 146 minutes. Rushdie, for decades a literary gadfly, says he was inspired by friends like Kazuo Ishiguro and Gunter Grass. Below, he discusses his influences, whether he'd write about Kashmir, and how the Sri Lankan president saved his film.

Rushdie: Mo Yan is a “patsy of the regime”

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 04:21:00 +0000

Nobel Prize laureate Mo Yan -- who has compared censorship to something as necessary as an airport security check and earned scorn from other writers for not being a staunch advocate of freedom of expression -- came under criticism Thursday from Salman Rushdie.

Rushdie, who spent nearly a decade in hiding after Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini called for his death upon the publication of "The Satanic Verses," expressed frustration on Facebook that Yan would not support fellow writers and free speech activists in calling for the freedom of Liu Xiabo, the 2010 Nobel Peace laureate. More than 130 other Nobel laureates have signed the petition, including Desmond Tutu.

"This really is too bad," Rushdie wrote. "He defends censorship and won't sign the petition asking for the freedom of his fellow Nobelist Liu Xiaobo. Hard to avoid the conclusion that Mo Yan is the Chinese equivalent of the Soviet Russian apparatchik writer Mikhail Sholokhov: a patsy of the régime."

Shahin Najafi: No fatwa will stop me

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 01:00:00 +0000

You can’t know what to expect when you try to interview someone who is actively dodging assassination. I ring the doorbell. No answer. I try again, then knock. Nothing. The location of our meeting was only revealed to me last night. I double-check the address.

I text the person who arranged the meeting and she tells me to wait. Two minutes later, the door opens and a man edges out cautiously. He is wearing thick framed glasses, baggy Iranian-style pants, and a short-billed beanie. His name is Shahin Najafi. Last May, at least three ayatollahs called for his execution after he released a song they interpreted as insulting to Shia Islam’s 10th Imam. To sweeten the deal, a regime-controlled website offered $100,000 to whoever pulled the trigger. He invites me in and pours me tea.

“Of course I’m scared,” he says. After the first fatwa in May, Najafi hid out near Cologne, Germany, under police protection. In late September, he came to a city he thought was safer: Berkeley, Calif. Here, he still goes out in costume, and only under the watchful eye of his manager, but he believes the odds of assassination are far slimmer.

Salman Rushdie and John le Carré reconcile after 15-year feud

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 17:42:00 +0000

After more than a decade of what the Guardian has called "one of the most gloriously vituperative literary feuds of recent times," the writers John le Carré and Salman Rushdie have reconciled. The Guardian reports:

Last month, Rushdie told an audience at the Cheltenham literature festival that he "really" admired Le Carré as a writer. "I wish we hadn't done it," he said of the 15-year-old feud which played out in the letters pages of the Guardian in 1997.

...Now Le Carré has also extended an olive branch. "I too regret the dispute," he told the Times.

According to the Times, the two began arguing "about the merits of freedom of speech versus the limits of religious tolerance," which began in 1997 when Rushdie penned a letter in the Guardian:

“Joseph Anton”: Memoir as noir

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 21:58:00 +0000

IN A RECENT TED TALK, psychologist Eleanor Longden describes being joined in a particularly stressful time in college by “a disembodied voice which calmly narrated everything [she] did in the third person: She is reading, she is going to a lecture, she is leaving the room.” The voice was “neutral, banal, oddly companionate,” and when she told doctors about it, they linked it at once to schizophrenia, resulting in a period of institutionalization that did more harm than good. Years later, after Longden entered the field herself, she hit upon another theory: that the voice was not necessarily bad, but served as a sort of inner compass, a voice of suppressed or inconvenient reason, part of a seemingly ulterior self that struggles violently, vaguely, to combine all the disparate voices of the self into one, consistent whole.

Salman Rushdie: It was worth it

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

When the phone call came that changed his life forever, a BBC reporter asked Salman Rushdie this: "How does it feel to know that you have just been sentenced to death by the Ayatollah Khomeini." It was Valentine's Day 1989. Rushdie thought for a moment and replied, "It doesn't feel good." Then he closed the shutters and locked the front door.

That wouldn't be enough protection. The fatwa -- a death sentence handed down for writing a novel, "The Satanic Verses," which many Muslims believed stood "against Islam, the Prophet and the Quran" -- would stand for another nine years. For many months, fiery protests filled the streets of Muslim cities, but also in London, where Rushdie lived. His book was burned. His translators were attacked; one was even killed. Priests and politicians and protesters demanded he apologize. But Rushdie was an artist. His book was fiction. There was nothing to apologize for.

Principle came with a cost. The fatwa would erase Rushdie's 40s. It would stall the work of a novelist whose first book, "Midnight's Children," won the Booker Prize. It would cost him at least one marriage, and separate him from his young son far too many times. And as Rushdie writes in his new memoir, "Joseph Anton," he often thought that near-decade in hiding would cost him his sanity.

Salman Rushdie fears nothing

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 21:45:00 +0000

Plates and glasses are cleared away, and a hush descends on the packed private dining room of a fancy Manhattan Indian restaurant; a distinguished writer -- the star of the evening’s event -- is about to give a reading. The iPad in his hands bathes his familiar features in a soft, electric glow that complements the muted lights and blinking candles spaced around the room.

As Salman Rushdie intones his own elegant prose in a rich, musical British accent, a soundtrack plays softly but distinctly in the background. If the music seems particularly well-selected -- if its rhythms subtly match the story's turning points -- that’s because it was commissioned expressly for the purpose.

Though the story is short, Rushdie stops several times to ask the audience if he should continue. At each juncture, rapt listeners beg him to go on. After the performance is over, guests murmur words like “mesmerizing” and “transporting” as they turn back to their tablemates -- and I’m one of them.

The event is a glitzy dinner organized by Booktrack, a company that publishes e-books with "synchronized soundtracks"; the occasion is the launch of the e-publisher's first short story -- Rushdie’s “In the South" -- with accompanying music composed by John Psathas. ("In the South" is available for download now from Booktrack's website.)

Salman Rushdie, back on trial

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:10:00 +0000

The Jaipur Literature Festival is a remarkable thing. It calls itself “the greatest literary show on earth.” In many ways, it is. Over 70,000 people show up. It’s organized by writers, not event managers. It’s free. Great crocodiles of school children in winter blazers crowd its sessions. Turbaned men with splendidly curled mustaches ladle out steaming hot chai into clay cups for the attendees. Parrots squawk in the trees. Chipmunks chase each other up and down the branches while Nobel laureates and Booker winners hold forth on the lawns. Indian grandmothers and blonde European expats trample over each other, fiercely fighting for seats. (The grandmothers tend to win.) It is a literature festival. But it’s more of a boisterous Indian mela – a fairground where anyone can come.

“We wanted it to be a place where you could meet Salman Rushdie, not just read him. Before Jaipur, you might only have been able to see him at some British Council event,” said William Dalrymple, the festival’s genial host. That was just about a month ago.