Salman Rushdie
Birthday:
19 June 1947, Bombay, Bombay Presidency, British India
Birth Name:
Ahmed Salman Rushdie
Height:
170 cm
He married the actress Padma Lakshmi, the hostess of "Padma's Passport," and dedicatee of his eighth novel, "Fury" (2001), on 17th April 2004. The late Ayatollah Khomeini declared a fatwa against him for the novel "The Satanic Verses" on 14th February 1989. He is currently completing a ninth novel. Prior to becomi...
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He married the actress Padma Lakshmi, the hostess of "Padma's Passport," and dedicatee of his eighth novel, "Fury" (2001), on 17th April 2004. The late Ayatollah Khomeini declared a fatwa against him for the novel "The Satanic Verses" on 14th February 1989. He is currently completing a ninth novel. Prior to becoming a full time novelist, he enjoyed a successful advertising career as a copywriter with Ayer Barker in London until 1982. Show less «
I still refuse to call it 'Mumbai', as do many people who live there. It's not ancient like Delhi, with thousands of years of history. Essen...Show more »
I still refuse to call it 'Mumbai', as do many people who live there. It's not ancient like Delhi, with thousands of years of history. Essentially it's a city the British built because they thought the natural harbour would be useful to the navy. They reclaimed land to join together seven islands into what is now the peninsula of south Bombay, then they built a fort and the city grew around it. Show less «
You can't be elected dog-catcher in America unless you're a Christian. For someone like me who spent a lot of his adult life in England and ...Show more »
You can't be elected dog-catcher in America unless you're a Christian. For someone like me who spent a lot of his adult life in England and western Europe,it's probably the biggest single difference between the United States and the rest of the western democracies. Show less «
Education changes the world. If you have generations of children being brought up in extremist madrasas to believe that that world view is t...Show more »
Education changes the world. If you have generations of children being brought up in extremist madrasas to believe that that world view is the correct world view, then you create generations of people with built-in hostilities. Even if nothing had happened to exacerbate those hostilities, even if there had not been an Iraq war, the mindset of generations, particularly of young men, has been badly affected. You see that anti-semitism is taken for granted, and that a highly misogynistic world view is propagated, where the role of women is cast as secondary. And when you get to other issues like the treatment of religious minorities or sexual minorities, there's a fantastic hostility. So you're bringing up generations of bigoted children. Show less «
[on a forced shutdown in Sri Lanka during the filming of 'Midnight's Children'] We lost two day's shooting and a lot of sleep. It's clear th...Show more »
[on a forced shutdown in Sri Lanka during the filming of 'Midnight's Children'] We lost two day's shooting and a lot of sleep. It's clear that there was somebody in the Iranian foreign ministry - I don't know who, and I don't know at how high a level it was, but someone - said to the Sri Lankan ambassador they they disapproved of the permission having been given [to film] and that it should be revoked. Fortunately Deepa [Mehta] as part of the process of planning the film, had personally been to see the president of Sri Lanka [as a project for]trying to develop the film industry in Sri Lanka, develop it as a location for filming, and that they saw this as being a kind of showcase for that. So they were very supportive of it.. The moment we got to the president's office he said, 'No,of course you must make your film'. Show less «
[on how he managed to weather the storm over 'Satanic Verses'] Just by being bloody-minded. I think I'm tougher than I thought I was. One of...Show more »
[on how he managed to weather the storm over 'Satanic Verses'] Just by being bloody-minded. I think I'm tougher than I thought I was. One of the things...was that I just wanted to be myself... to keep writing books I wanted to write. I think, if you knew nothing about my life story, if you'd never seen anything about my life and all you had was my books to look at, there isn't a great rift in 1989. It's not that writing after that is radically different in the writing before that. I think [it] has its own continuity, and I've tried very hard to do that. Show less «
The lessons learned at school are not necessarily those the school thinks it's teaching.
The lessons learned at school are not necessarily those the school thinks it's teaching.
The suicide bomber's imagination leads him to believe in a brilliant act of heroism, when in fact he is blowing himself up pointlessly and t...Show more »
The suicide bomber's imagination leads him to believe in a brilliant act of heroism, when in fact he is blowing himself up pointlessly and taking other people's lives. Show less «
I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force of liberty and against tyranny, disho...Show more »
I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force of liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. "Respect for religion" has become a code phrase meaning "fear of religion". Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and yes, our fearless disrespect. Show less «
[Comment on the Fatwa] I wish I'd written a more offensive book...
[Comment on the Fatwa] I wish I'd written a more offensive book...
Salman Rushdie's Photos
