Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (born 19 June 1947) is an Indian-born British and American novelist. His work often combines magical realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations. His novels are typically set on the Indian subcontinent, feature an Indian protagonist, and/or portray Indian familial relationships. Rushdie's second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was deemed to be "the best novel of all winners" on two occasions that marked the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize. After his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), Rushdie became the subject of several assassination attempts and death threats because of what was seen by some to be an irreverent depiction of Muhammad. The controversy involving the Satanic Verses included a fatwa calling for his death issued by Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran. The book was banned in 20 countries. Numerous killings and bombings have been carried out by extremists who cited the book as motivation, sparking a debate about censorship and religiously motivated violence. In 2022, Rushdie survived a stabbing at the Chautauqua Institution that led to loss of his right eye and inflicted damage to his liver and hands. Two of the men who went to his aid were awarded the Carnegie Medal for heroism in 2025. Rushdie was educated at King's College at the University of Cambridge, where he graduated with a degree in history in 1968. In 1983, Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was appointed a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in 1999. Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for his services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked him 13th on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Since 2000, he has lived in the United States. Rushdie was named Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University in 2015. Earlier, he taught at Emory University. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, Rushdie published Joseph Anton: A Memoir, an account of his life in the wake of the events following The Satanic Verses. He was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in April 2023. Rushdie has been married five times. From 2004 to 2007, he was married to Indian-American television presenter and model Padma Lakshmi.
Early life Rushdie was born into a Kashmiri Muslim family on 19 June 1947 in Bombay, known as Mumbai since 1995, in British India. He is the son of Anis Ahmed Rushdie, a Cambridge-educated lawyer-turned-businessman, and Negin Bhatt, a teacher. His father was dismissed from the Indian Civil Services (ICS) after it emerged that the birth certificate submitted by him had changes to make him appear younger than he was. Rushdie has three sisters. He wrote in his memoir, Joseph Anton, that his father adopted the name Rushdie in honour of Ibn Rushd. Rushdie recalled his "first literary influence": "When I first saw The Wizard of Oz it made a writer of me." He recalled: "Every child in India in my day (and probably still) was obsessed with P. G. Wodehouse and Agatha Christie. I read mountains of books by both." Rushdie has his ancestral home built by his grandfather named Anees Villa in Solan, Himachal Pradesh. Rushdie also recalled that "Alice captured my imagination as few other books did: both the books, not just Alice's Adventures in Wonderland but Through the Looking-Glass as well, and I can still recite the whole of "Jabberwocky" and "The Walrus and the Carpenter" from memory. I also loved the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome because of the unimaginable freedom those young people sailing in the Lake District were given by their families ... When I was 16, I read The Lord Of The Rings and became obsessed, and can still recite the inscription on the Ruling Ring ('One ring to rule them all...') in the dark language of Mordor. I read an astonishing amount of Golden Age science fiction, not just Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke and Kurt Vonnegut but more arcane writers like Clifford D. Simak, James Blish, Zenna Henderson and L. Sprague de Camp." He has written about his family following the Indian custom of kissing holy books if they were dropped on the floor. "But we kissed everything. We kissed dictionaries and atlases. We kissed Enid Blyton novels and Superman comics. If I'd ever dropped the telephone directory I'd probably have kissed that, too." While in India, Rushdie was educated at the Cathedral and John Connon School. He immigrated to England in 1961 and attended Rugby School. He then attended Cambridge as an undergraduate student at King's College, graduating in 1968 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history.
Career
Copywriter Rushdie worked as a copywriter for the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather, where he came up with "irresistibubble" for Aero and "Naughty but Nice" for cream cakes, and for the agency Ayer Barker (until 1982), for whom he wrote the line "That'll do nicely" for American Express. Collaborating with musician Ronnie Bond, Rushdie wrote the words for an advertising record on behalf of the now defunct Burnley Building Society that was recorded at Good Earth Studios, London. The song was called "The Best Dreams" and was sung by George Chandler. It was while at Ogilvy that Rushdie wrote Midnight's Children, before becoming a full-time writer. Rushdie was a personal friend of Angela Carter's, calling her "the first great writer I ever met".
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