59 Fun Facts About Salman Rushdie

In which city was Salman Rushdie born in 1947?

Bombay, now Mumbai, was his birthplace eight weeks before Indian independence; he later gave the hero of Midnight's Children a birth at the exact stroke of it.

Midnight's Children won which special 1993 prize?

The Booker of Bookers named it the best winner of the prize's first quarter-century, twelve years after its own 1981 win; a public vote for the 40th anniversary, in 2008, chose it again.

In which English city was The Satanic Verses publicly burned in January 1989?

Bradford's bonfire made headlines where an earlier one in Bolton had been all but ignored; India had banned the novel's import within days of its publication.

Which Iranian leader issued the fatwa against Rushdie?

Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran's supreme leader, issued it in the last months of his life and died without lifting it; nine years passed before Iran's government said it would no longer try to enforce it.

On what date was the fatwa against Rushdie proclaimed on Radio Tehran?

14 February 1989, Valentine's Day: Rushdie went into hiding under police protection and lived that way for the next nine years.

Rushdie's father renamed the family in honour of Ibn Rushd, the philosopher the West knows by which name?

Averroes. The rationalist of 12th-century Muslim Spain turns up in Rushdie's 2015 novel, where he has a love affair with a jinn princess.

Which film did Rushdie say made a writer of him when he first saw it?

The Wizard of Oz. At ten he wrote his first story, 'Over the Rainbow', and in 1992 he published a short book about the film for the British Film Institute.

Which English public school did Rushdie attend after emigrating in 1961?

Rugby. He later wrote that a boy there could make three mistakes, being foreign, clever and bad at games, and that he made all three.

What subject did Rushdie study at King's College, Cambridge?

History. He has said a course there on Muhammad and the rise of Islam is where he first read of the 'satanic verses' incident, a story he filed away for a novel.

Which product's slogan Naughty but Nice did Rushdie write as an advertising copywriter?

He also coined irresistibubble for Aero and That'll do nicely for American Express.

Which chocolate bar did Rushdie sell with the made-up word 'irresistibubble' in his advertising days?

Aero. He wrote advertising copy in London through most of the 1970s, and gave it up for full-time fiction only once Midnight's Children had made his name.

What was Rushdie's debut novel, published in 1975?

Grimus. The science-fiction fantasy flopped, and Rushdie himself later called it 'too clever for its own good'; his next novel, six years on, made him famous.

What is the name of the protagonist of Midnight's Children, born at the stroke of India's independence?

Saleem Sinai. His midnight gift is telepathy, which he uses to convene a 'Midnight Children's Conference' of the others born in that hour.

Rushdie's 1983 novel Shame is set in a version of which country?

Pakistan. The narrator insists the country 'is not Pakistan, or not quite', yet critics read the novel as an allegory of the real nation's politics.

Which Central American country was the subject of Rushdie's 1987 non-fiction book The Jaguar Smile?

Nicaragua. He visited in 1986, when the Sandinista government had fallen out with Washington, and wrote up the trip as his first full-length non-fiction book.

Who are the two protagonists of The Satanic Verses, both Indian Muslim actors?

Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha. Both survive a fall towards the English Channel from an exploding jet; one takes on an archangel's nature, the other grows horns and goat legs.

Beaten to the 1988 Booker Prize by Oscar and Lucinda, The Satanic Verses still won which award that year?

The Whitbread Award. It took the Whitbread's novel-of-the-year category; within months the book was banned in many countries and its author was in hiding.

Which children's novel did Rushdie write for his son Zafar in the first years of the fatwa?

Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Its dedication is an acrostic poem spelling out Zafar, the son from whom Rushdie's years in hiding kept him apart.

Which children's author called Rushdie 'a dangerous opportunist' in a 1989 letter to The Times?

Roald Dahl. He argued that Rushdie must have known exactly what feelings the novel would stir among devout Muslims, and dismissed the book as sensationalism.

Rushdie's 1999 novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet retells which myth with rock stars?

Orpheus and Eurydice. The novel's Orpheus is a rock star who writes its title song after his great love, a singer, dies, and the book retells the rise of rock music along the way.

Which band recorded a song called The Ground Beneath Her Feet with lyrics by Rushdie?

U2. Bono set a song lyric from Rushdie's 1999 novel of the same name to music almost unchanged, and the band released it with the novelist credited as lyricist.

At which London stadium did Rushdie walk on stage at a rock concert in 1993, despite the fatwa?

Wembley. He was supposed to be in hiding, yet he walked out at the singer's invitation and, as the band's bassist put it, the stadium erupted.

Which 1995 Rushdie novel is a family saga spanning a century of India's past?

The Moor's Last Sigh. Its narrator ages at twice the normal rate, and the title recalls the last Muslim king of Granada looking back at the city he had surrendered.

Which Mughal emperor's court is visited by a European in The Enchantress of Florence (2008)?

Akbar. The visitor, a traveller from Florence, claims to be the emperor's long-lost relative, born to an exiled princess of his own dynasty.

Rushdie's Quichotte loves a woman he knows only from what?

Her talk show. The old pill salesman binges on reality TV, falls for a host he has never met and sets off to win her with an imaginary son he names Sancho.

What is the name of the woman who breathes an empire into existence in Rushdie's 2023 novel Victory City?

Pampa Kampana. At nine she becomes the vessel of a goddess, who grants her nearly 250 years of life in which to raise the great city of Bisnaga.

What was the secret alias Rushdie used while in hiding, later the title of his 2012 memoir?

Joseph Anton. He joined the first names of Conrad and Chekhov, and bristled when his police protectors promptly shortened it to Joe.

Iran cut ties with Britain in 1989 after London refused to do what?

Denounce Rushdie and his novel. Tehran had given Britain a week to comply; relations resumed at a lower level in 1990, with the death sentence still in force.

What happened to Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses, in 1991?

He was stabbed to death. He was found outside his university office near Tokyo in July 1991, days after the novel's Italian translator survived a stabbing in Milan, and the murder was never solved.

Which 1970s singer-songwriter shocked fans in 1989 by appearing to endorse the death sentence on Rushdie?

Cat Stevens. By then known as Yusuf Islam, he told a British TV programme he would have hoped for 'the real thing' rather than the burning of an effigy of the author.

How did Mustafa Mazeh, honoured in Tehran as the first martyr of the hunt for Rushdie, die in 1989?

His own bomb went off. He was priming a book bomb in a Paddington hotel room when it exploded, and an empty shrine in a Tehran war cemetery now honours him.

In which HBO comedy did Rushdie play himself, advising a man who has earned a fatwa by writing a musical about one?

Curb Your Enthusiasm. In 2017 Larry David's musical about the fatwa earns him one of his own, and Rushdie turns up to advise him; he said the jokes helped defuse his own story.

Which Iranian president declared the fatwa finished in 1998 as a condition of restoring ties with the UK?

Mohammad Khatami. His government pledged neither to support nor hinder attempts on Rushdie's life, but the edict was never lifted, and Iranian media added $600,000 to the bounty in 2016.

Where was Rushdie attacked on stage on 12 August 2022?

The Chautauqua Institution in New York. He was about to speak on the United States as a refuge for exiled writers when a man rushed the stage and set upon him.

What did Rushdie lose for good in the 2022 attack on him?

The sight in one eye. For two months the extent of his injuries was unclear, until his agent revealed that one eye was blind and one hand disabled by severed nerves.

What is the title of Rushdie's 2024 memoir about the attack?

Knife. He never uses his attacker's name in it, calling him only 'the A', and writes out imagined conversations with him.

Rushdie's attacker admitted from jail that his reading of The Satanic Verses went no further than what?

A couple of pages. He told the New York Post that he respected the ayatollah behind the fatwa and had not expected Rushdie to survive; a court later jailed him for 25 years.

Two nights before the 2022 attack, Rushdie dreamed of a man with a spear bearing down on him where?

A Roman amphitheatre. He thrashed about so much that his wife had to wake him, and he thought of cancelling the lecture before deciding nobody runs their life by a bad dream.

Which honour did Rushdie receive in 2007?

A knighthood. Rushdie called himself thrilled and humbled, while Iran's government condemned the honour and called in Britain's envoy to protest.

Which British spy novelist feuded publicly with Rushdie after arguing that nobody may insult a great religion with impunity?

John le Carré. He called the death sentence outrageous but held that Rushdie shared the blame, and in 2012 he said their famous spat had been a mistake.

Which television presenter and model was married to Rushdie from 2004 to 2007?

Padma Lakshmi. Each later told a side of the marriage in a memoir, his in 2012 and hers in 2016.

Which famously reclusive American novelist had dinner with Rushdie and then, he says, 'never called again'?

Thomas Pynchon. Rushdie owed the meeting to a favourable review he had written of one of the invisible man's novels, and found him 'very satisfyingly Pynchonesque'.

Which publisher brought out The Satanic Verses in 1988 and was condemned alongside Rushdie in the fatwa?

Viking Penguin. The edict called for the death of the book's publishers as well as its author, and shops that stocked the novel were firebombed in London and Sydney.

In which 2001 film did Rushdie make a cameo appearance?

Bridget Jones's Diary. He plays himself at a book launch, where Bridget's fumbled speech of welcome manages to insult both him and Jeffrey Archer.

Which director made the 2012 film of Midnight's Children?

Deepa Mehta. Rushdie wrote the screenplay himself, and she shot the film in Sri Lanka under a false title, fearing protests if word got out.

Rushdie was president of which writers' organisation from 2004 to 2006?

PEN American Center. During his term he helped found its World Voices festival of international literature, launched in New York in 2005.

Which Atlanta university bought Rushdie's archive in 2006 and made him its writer in residence?

Emory. Its archive includes four of his old computers and the typescript of an early novel he judged too derivative ever to submit.

Rushdie says his favourite novelist is probably which writer, on more days than anyone else?

Joyce. Asked for his favourite novelist of all time, he said there were days when it was Kafka, 'in whose world we all live', and days when it was Dickens, before settling on Joyce.

In which city did Rushdie accept the German book trade's Peace Prize in 2023, a year after the attack on him?

Frankfurt. The jury honoured his 'indomitable spirit' in going on writing after the attempt on his life, and the novelist Daniel Kehlmann gave the speech in his praise.

What eye problem did Rushdie have corrected by surgery in 1999?

Drooping eyelids. The hooded look had been his trademark, but he said that without the operation he would soon have been unable to open his eyes at all.

Reviewing his 2015 novel, Ursula Le Guin called Rushdie our what?

Scheherazade. Le Guin's point was that he, like her, had lived as a storyteller under threat of death and had so far escaped; the novel's title adds up to 1,001 nights.

Which award did two men who went to Rushdie's aid in 2022 receive in 2025?

The Carnegie Medal. It rewards civilian heroism: the event's moderator, Henry Reese, charged the attacker and held his legs down, and was himself wounded above the eye.

Which prime minister sued Rushdie for libel over a single sentence in Midnight's Children?

Indira Gandhi. The novel casts her as 'the Widow', and her 1984 action in the British courts ended when Rushdie agreed to take the sentence out.

Rushdie's Quichotte lost the 2019 Booker to Bernardine Evaristo and which co-winner?

Margaret Atwood. It was Rushdie's fifth time on the shortlist and his fourth defeat, as the judges defied a ban on joint winners to honour The Testaments and Girl, Woman, Other.

The fatwa against Rushdie was proclaimed on the day of which close friend's memorial service?

Bruce Chatwin. Rushdie went to the London service anyway, where Paul Theroux leaned over from the pew behind and said, 'I suppose we'll be here for you next week, Salman.'

Rushdie asked British censors to do what with a 1990 film casting him as its villain?

Release it. International Gorillay had been refused a certificate as a libel on him, and he argued that a ban would only have made it 'the hottest video in town'.

Which Nobel laureate called the terrorism aimed at Rushdie 'indefensible' and was attacked in 1994?

Naguib Mahfouz. The Egyptian wrote the words for a 1993 anthology by Arab and Muslim writers; the next year an extremist angered by one of his own novels wounded him in the neck.

Which 2005 Rushdie novel won India's Hutch Crossword Book Award?

Shalimar the Clown. Its title character performs a tightrope act in his Kashmiri village before turning killer, in a novel that moves between Kashmir and Los Angeles.

How does Rushdie describe his own religious position, in a 2006 PBS interview?

A 'hardline atheist'. In hiding in 1990 he had publicly renewed his Muslim faith, hoping to end the threat; Iran's leader rejected the gesture, and Rushdie later called it perhaps his lowest point.