{"id":418,"date":"2014-06-11T23:21:50","date_gmt":"2014-06-11T23:21:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/?p=418"},"modified":"2017-05-31T18:57:22","modified_gmt":"2017-05-31T18:57:22","slug":"rushdie-salman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/2014\/06\/11\/rushdie-salman\/","title":{"rendered":"Rushdie, Salman"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/h1>\n

Biography<\/h1>\n
\"Image<\/a>
Image by David Shankbone\/CC Licensed<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay in 1947, just months before the Partition of British India<\/a>. His father, Ahmed, was a businessman and his mother, Negin, was a teacher. He grew up loving the escape literature and film offered, and he wrote his first story when he was ten years old. He encountered some of his earliest influences at a young age, including\u00a0The Wizard of Oz<\/em>, Superman comics, and Bollywood <\/a>movies.<\/p>\n

He left India at the age of fourteen to attend Rugby School in England, while his family left India for Pakistan. Of his time at Rugby, he says: \u201cI had three things wrong, I was foreign, I was clever and I was bad at games, and it seemed to me that I could have made any two of those mistakes and I\u2019d have been alright. . . . If I\u2019d been any two of those things I\u2019d have got away with it \u2014 three was unforgivable.\u201d He then studied history at King\u2019s College, Cambridge, and after graduation, he earned a living working in advertising while writing his first novel\u00a0Grimus<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The positive reception his second novel,\u00a0Midnight\u2019s Children<\/em>, received allowed Rushdie to become a full-time writer, crafting vivid novels about life in and out of modern India and Pakistan. The success of\u00a0Midnight\u2019s Children<\/em>\u00a0made Rushdie the voice of Indians writing in England, promoting fellow writers and editing the volume\u00a0Indian Writing in English<\/em>.<\/p>\n

With the publication of\u00a0The Satanic Verses\u00a0<\/em>in 1988, Rushdie became the target of a fatwa, or a religious edict, supported by Iran\u2019s religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini. Since the fatwa called for his death, Rushdie went into hiding in February 1989. Many bookstores in the U.K. and the United States received threats regarding his book. The Japanese translator of\u00a0The Satanic Verses<\/em>\u00a0was stabbed to death, and both the Italian translator and the Norwegian publisher were attacked but survived. Protected by the Special Branch, Rushdie moved from one secure house to another, communicating to his friends and family via secure telephone line and fax. In 1999, the fatwa was finally lifted, and Rushdie was able to appear in public again.<\/p>\n

In 2005, Salman Rushdie joined the faculty of Emory University as Distinguished Writer in Residence. He also placed his archive at Emory\u2019s Woodruff Library, which opened to the public in Spring 2010. His memoir\u00a0Joseph Anton: A Memoir\u00a0<\/em>came out in 2012.<\/p>\n

See:\u00a0Magical Realism<\/a>,\u00a0Postcolonial Novel<\/a>,\u00a0Partition of India<\/a><\/p>\n

Midnight\u2019s Children<\/em>\u00a0and The Booker Prize<\/h3>\n
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\"Midnight's<\/a>
Midnight’s Children, 1981<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Rushdie\u2019s second novel,\u00a0Midnight\u2019s Children<\/em>, depicts the condition of India through the voice and family of Saleem Sinai, a child born at the moment of India\u2019s independence. His momentous birth endows he and 1001 other children born close to the stroke of midnight with special powers. Saleem \u00a0believes his birth, marked by a letter from Prime Minister Nehru, determine that his fate is bound up with the nation\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Written in Saleem\u2019s irreverent, humorous voice, Rushdie fictionalizes India\u2019s recent political and social history. Using his family and their friends as a template for the various factions in India\u2019s political, business, and military scenes, Saleem chronicles a military coup in Pakistan, the war between Pakistan and India, and Indira Gandhi\u2019s Emergency.<\/p>\n

Midnight\u2019s Children<\/em>\u00a0won the\u00a0Booker Prize<\/a>\u00a0in 1981, the Booker of Bookers in 1993, and Best of the Booker in 2008. It has been adapted for the stage, and attempts have been made to adapt it for television but have failed. Rushdie worked with filmmaker Deepa Mehta<\/a> to turn the novel into a film.<\/p>\n

Themes in Rushdie\u2019s Writing<\/h3>\n

Many themes in Rushdie\u2019s writing weave themselves through his work, although history always plays an integral role in establishing the framework of his stories. According to Rushdie: \u201cLiterature revalues history by shifting the point of view, by demystifying, by seeing what was always there to be seen, what we would have seen if the conjurers of power had not been trying so hard to distract our attention.\u201d History provides Rushdie with the backdrop to develop motifs exploring the complexities of identity, migration, politics, and love.<\/p>\n

Major Works<\/h3>\n