Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (0)

Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is a British Indian novelist and essayist. He is born on 19. June 1947. He is the only son of Anis Ahmed Rushdie and Negin Bhatt, a teacher . Rushdie was born in Bombay, India, into a Muslim family of Kashmiri descent.[10][11][12] He was educated at Cathedral and John Connon School in Mumbai, Rugby School, and King 's College, University of Cambridge, where he studied history.
Rushdie's first career was as a copywriter, working for the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather. It was while he was at Ogilvy that he wrote Midnight's Children , before becoming a full-time writer .
His first novel , Grimus, a part - science fiction tale , was generally ignored by the public and literary critics. His next novel, Midnight's Children, catapulted him to literary notability. It is regarded by many as one of the great books of the last 100 years . This work won the 1981 Booker Prize and, in 1993 and 2008, was awarded the Best of the Bookers as the best novel to have received the prize during its first 25 and 40 years. After Midnight's Children, Rushdie wrote Shame (1983), in which he depicts the political turmoil in Pakistan . Shame won France 's Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Best Foreign Book) and was a close runner-up for the Booker Prize. Both these works of postcolonial literature are characterised by a style of magic realism and the immigrant outlook that Rushdie is very conscious of as a member of the Indian diaspora (väljaränne Palestiinast).
Rushdie wrote a non-fiction book about Nicaragua in the 1980s, The Jaguar Smile (1987). The book has a political focus and is based on his first-hand experiences and research at the scene of Sandinista political experiments. His most controversial work, The Satanic Verses, was published in 1988.
Besides writing a book, Rushdie has quietly mentored younger Indian (and ethnic -Indian) writers , influenced an entire generation of Indo-Anglian writers, and is an influential writer in postcolonial literature in general. He has received many plaudits for his writings, including the Writer of the Year Award in Germany and many of literature's highest honours. Rushdie was the President of PEN American Center from 2004 to 2006.
Rushdie came from a Muslim family but says that he was never really religious . In 1990, he issued a statement claiming he had renewed his Muslim faith, had repudiated the attacks on Islam in his novel and was committed to working for better understanding of the religion across the world. He afterwards said, he was only pretending all of this.
His books often focus on the role of religion in society and conflicts between faiths and between the religious and those of no faith.
Rushdie advocates the application of higher criticism, pioneered during the late 19th century .
Rushdie has been married four times . He was married to his first wife Clarissa Luard from 1976 to 1987 and fathered a son, Zafar (born 1980). His second wife was the American novelist Marianne Wiggins; they were married in 1988 and divorced in 1993. His third wife, from 1997 to 2004, was Elizabeth West ; they have a son, Milan (born 1999). In 2004, he married the Indian American actress and model Padma Lakshmi, the host of the American reality- television show Top Chef . The marriage ended on 2 July 2007, with Lakshmi indicating that it was her desire to end the marriage. In 2008 the Bollywood press romantically linked him to the Indian model Riya Sen, with whom he was otherwise a friend. In 1999 Rushdie had an operation to correct ptosis, a tendon condition that causes drooping eyelids and that, according to him, was making it increasingly difficult for him to open his eyes . "If I hadn't had an operation, in a couple of years from now I wouldn't have been able to open my eyes at all," he said.
Midnight's Children follows the life of a child, born at the stroke of midnight as India gained its independence, who is endowed with special powers and a connection to other children born at the dawn of a new and tumultuous (rahutu) age in the history of the Indian sub- continent and the birth of the modern nation of India. The character of Saleem Sinai has been compared to Rushdie.