Born in Bombay, India in 1947.

Came to London in the 1960s as a high school student and stayed.

He received an M.A. in history from King's College in Cambridge, England.

He has worked as a writer and copyeditor as well as an actor.

Married and divorced four times, he has two children.

Rushdie's multicultural background gives him insight into the subject of diversity.

However, his background has been overshadowed by political controversy in the aftermath of the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses.

The Satanic Verses was denounced as a blasphemous insult to Islam and banned in India.

On Feb. 14, 1989 a fatwa (edict), a sentence of death, was pronounced on both Rushdie and his publishers by Ayatollah Ruhoolah Khomeini of Iran. Rushdie went into hiding in England where he still resides.

Although the Iranian government lifted the fatwa in September 1998, some fundamentalist Muslim groups declared that a fatwa cannot be lifted. As of the 2005 anniversary of the fatwa, Iran's Revolutionary Guards have reaffirmed the death sentence.

Rushdie continues to maintain tight security though he does frequently travel between homes in England, the United States, and India, and he does make public appearances and grant interviews.

• Midnight's Children (1981)
  • winner of the Booker Prize
• The Satanic Verses (1988)
• Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990)
• The Moor's Last Sigh (1996)

InfoMarks (About InfoMarks)

• "Salman Rushdie" in Contemporary Authors
• "Salman Rushdie" in Contemporary Literary Criticism-Select