Indian-born, Anglo-American writer Salman Rushdie received popular and critical acclaim for his essays and allegorical novels that explore a range of complex historical and philosophical issues. Rushdie’s work has also been met with great controversy, due to his depictions of sensitive political and religious issues.
Sir Ahmad Salman Rushdie was born in 1947 in Bombay (now Mumbai), India. His father was a prominent Indian business man, which allowed Rushdie to attend Rugby School. He then attended the University of Cambridge, and earned his master’s degree in history in 1968. During the 1970s, Rushdie worked as an advertising copywriter in London, before he published his first novel, Grimus, in 1975. He saw even greater critical and popular success following the 1981 publication of his second novel, Midnight’s Children, which is a fable about the conditions of modern India. Midnight’s Children earned a Booker Prize in 1981 and saw lasting success, with a film adaptation released years later in 2012. In 1983, Rushdie published a third novel, Shame, addressing contemporary politics in Pakistan.
Rushdie’s literary reputation shifted following controversy sparked by his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988). The Satanic Verses features a depiction of a character who is based on the Prophet Muhammad, and this depiction as well as his portrayal of the Quar’an led to international criticism. Muslim leaders in Britain immediately denounced the novel as blasphemy, and demonstrations against it spread into Pakistan in 1989. In February 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of revolutionary Iran, condemned Rushdie publicly and issued a fatwa against him calling for his murder. Rushdie then was forced into hiding under the protection of Scotland Yard. 
Despite the threats to Rushdie’s safety, he continued to write while in hiding. During this time, wrote a range of genres including Imaginary Homelands (1991), an essay collection, Haorun and the Sea of Stories (1990), a children’s novel, East, West (1994), a short-story collection, and Moor’s Last Sigh (1995), a novel. In 1998, the Iranian government officially lifted the almost decade-long fatwa against Rushdie. In 2012, Rushdie published a memoir titled Joseph Anton, which detailed his experience living in seclusion. Despite his willingness to share elements of this experience, he has also expressed that he does not want this political situation to define him or his career. On the topic, in an interview he stated “It destroys my individuality as a person and as a writer. I’m not a geopolitical entity. I’m someone writing in a room.” After he was able to return to public life, Rushdie continued to publish in a range of genres, with topics ranging from the September 11 attacks, to the immigrant experience, to Arabic mythology. 
In addition to his Booker Prize for Midnight’s Children, Rushdie has received a number of international awards over the course of his career. From 2004-2006, Rushdie was the President of PEN American Center, and in 2007 he received a Knighthood. In 2008 Rushdie became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and he holds France’s highest literary honor, the rank of Commandeur in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Rushdie has also received honorary doctorates and fellowships from twelve universities in Europe and the United States, and his books have been translated into more than forty languages.