Salman Rushdie on Dreams and the Power of Literature

Sir Salman Rushdie is a novelist and essayist. His second novel, Midnight's Children, won the Booker Prize in 1981. His work is concerned with the many connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations. His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, was the center of a major controversy, provoking protests from Muslims in several countries. Death threats were made against him, including a fatwā calling for his assassination issued by Ayatollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, on Valentine’s Day in 1989, and as a result he was put under police protection by the British government. Salman Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Britain's senior literary organization, in 1983. He was given France’s highest artistic honor in 1999. And in 2007, Queen Elizabeth knighted him for his services to literature. Since 2000, Mr. Rushdie has lived in the United States, where he has worked at Emory University and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is now a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. His most recent novel, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, was just published simultaneously around the world in the English language. Salman Rushdie was in the Northwest to speak at Town Hall Seattle, presented by Elliott Bay Book Company.