The 75-year-old award-winning novelist described his elevation to the Companions of Honor in June as a “tremendous honour” and a “privilege”. It was a high point in a brilliant career overshadowed by the most extraordinary controversy the literary world has seen. Established in 1917 by George V, the Companions of Honor are awarded for long service in the arts, science, medicine or government. Rushdie certainly fits that bill. The author of more than 20 books, the Indian-born, rugby-educated, former advertising copywriter is not only prolific but also accomplished. His third novel Midnight’s Children won the Booker Prize in 1981 and then the Best of Booker Prize winners in 2008. But it was his controversial fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, that propelled him onto the front pages 34 years ago, turning him into a global name, a hate figure and the target of death threats. Padma Lakshmi and Salman Rushdie at the Vanity Fair Oscar after party in March 2006 Since then he has lived under the long shadow of fear, although his life has gradually returned to something approaching normalcy. Five years in the making, The Satanic Verses shocked the world and sparked outrage among Muslims as protesters accused the author of insulting their deepest religious beliefs. calling the magical-realist epic novel “blasphemy.” The complex and multi-layered plot centers on two men, Indian Muslims living in England, steeped in Islam but confused by the temptations of the West. The former survives by returning to its roots. the second kills himself, destroyed by the inability to reconcile his spiritual needs and the mental inability to return to faith. Rushdie was blindsided by the violent response to his novel, which he suggested was about “immigration, transformation, split selves, love, death” and a “serious attempt to write about religion and revelation from the point of view of corner of a worldly person’. . But after its publication in 1988, it was banned in many countries, including Rushdie’s native India, where 12 people died in a riot in Mumbai. There were violent protests in Pakistan. Some chains stopped selling the book and copies were burned across the UK, first in Bolton where 7,000 Muslims gathered on 2 December 1988, and then in Bradford in January 1989. In May of the same year, thousands gathered in Parliament Square in London to burn an effigy of Rushdie. On Valentine’s Day 1989, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini called for Rushdie’s execution by issuing a fatwa against him and his publishers – forcing the author into hiding for nearly a decade, while translators and publishers were either murdered or the victims of attempted terrorist attacks. In October 1993, William Nygaard, the Norwegian publisher of the novel, was shot three times outside his home in Oslo and seriously injured. A £2.7 million bounty was placed on the author’s head, which resulted in Rushdie being placed under 24-hour armed guard under the British government’s protection scheme and moved from one secure location to another. Novelist and friend Ian McEwan recalls: “The first few months were the worst. Nobody knew anything. Were Iranian agents, professional assassins already in the UK when the fatwa was announced? Could a “freelancer”, stirred by a complaint in a mosque, be an effective killer? “The mobs were terrifying. They burned books in the street, bayoneted for blood outside Parliament and waved “Rushdie must die” placards. Rushdie came out of hiding in 1998 when Iran’s new president, Mohammad Khatami, said he no longer supported the fatwa. In 2012, he published his memoirs under his pen name during that dark time – Joseph Anton – a combination of the names of two writers he loved: Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov. But as recently as February 2016, it was reported that money had been raised to add to the fatwa, reminding the author that – for some – the Ayatollah’s decision still stands. Students of the Jamiat Talba-e-Arabia religious party burn an effigy of British author Salman Rushdie during a protest in Multan, Pakistan in June 2007 In recent years, Rushdie has tried to put distance between his life as a writer in New York now – where he lived 20 years ago – and the events of nearly 35 years ago. “I really resist the idea of being dragged back to that time period,” he said in an interview last year, adding that he hates being defined. “It destroys my individuality as a person and as a writer. I am not a geopolitical entity. I’m someone who writes in a room. “One of the benefits of being a writer, I think, is that if what you do for a living examines your life, hopefully by the time you get to that advanced age, you’ll understand something about yourself and why you think, I think. ‘ Regarding the death threats, the fatwa, the years in hiding with his sanity intact, Rushdie added: “I’m foolishly optimistic and I think it got me through those bad years because I thought there would be a happy ending when very few they believed it.” In another interview, however, he admitted that he often thought about death. “I did, and now I think about it for a different reason, a little more inevitable reason,” he said, referring to his years. The son of an Indian lawyer turned businessman, Rushdie was 14 when he was sent to a boarding school in Britain. He turned to writing in the 1970s after a successful career in advertising, during which he came up with the cream-cake slogan, “Naughty but nice.” Acclaimed for his magical-realist style, he was a rising star in the literary world, expected to light up the world with each new offering – though with The Satanic Verses, it was not as he ever imagined or intended. Novelist and friend Martin Amis once wrote: “Salman had disappeared into the block capital world. It had disappeared on the front page.’ A protester with ‘we are ready to kill Rushdie’ signs and a effigy of him on a noose in Beirut, Lebanon in 1989 He had even moved with a Special Branch protection team to a hotel in the Cotswolds for his own safety. That same night, Channel Four broadcast a pre-recorded interview with Rushdie, in which he said: “If you don’t want to read a book, you don’t have to read it. It is very difficult to get offended by The Satanic Verses – it requires a long period of intensive reading. It’s a quarter of a million words.’ Four days after the fatwa was issued, he apologized: “I am deeply sorry for the distress the publication has caused to sincere followers of Islam.” Khomeini rejected the apology. He said that even if Rushdie repented and “became the most pious man of all time”, it was still the duty of every Muslim to “use everything they have” to kill him. Ever the optimist, Rushdie was able to talk about the “fun side” of his global fame and became equally famous for his love life and the “party boy” image – which he insists was greatly exaggerated – that emerged after coming out of hiding . . Married four times, he has a son Zafar with his first wife Clarissa Luard. They divorced in 1987, shortly before the publication of The Satanic Verses, after he left her for bohemian Australian author Robyn Davidson. Author Sir Salman Rushdie holds a copy of his controversial book, ‘The Satanic Verses’ during a 1992 press conference in the US in June 2007 After this two-year romance, he married American novelist Marianne Wiggins. Their marriage lasted five years and in 1997 he married publishing assistant Elizabeth West, whom he met in hiding and with whom he has a second son, Milan. The marriage collapsed when he met Indian-born model Padma Lakshmi. Their marriage in 2004 lasted three years. Today, his partner is said to be the American poet and artist Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Despite living under the shadow of a fatwa for so long, Rushdie is a staunch defender of free speech and has spoken of his distaste for today’s creeping “cancellation culture”. Comfortable in the limelight, he learned to embrace his fame in more unexpected ways – including a cameo in Bridget Jones’s Diary. In 2017, he made another cameo in Larry David’s sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm. Rushdie – mocking his ordeal – tells Larry, who has also issued a fatwa against him, that there are positives – women will flock to him. “At first I thought, you know, ‘How funny is this really?’ And then I thought, “Okay, there’s a point in my life that wouldn’t be funny, and the fact that we can now ship that is good.” Now, as a victim of a violent knife attack, we hope that optimism was not misplaced.
