Salman Rushdie • „My’ India has always been based on ideas of multiplicity, pluralism, hybridity…”

• born Ahmad Salman Rushdie in Bombay, India in 1947 • studied history at Cambridge • Magic realism „The Mexican critic Luis Leal summed up the difficulty of defining magical realism by writing, "If you can explain it, then it's not magical realism.” (originated in South America, authors encountering surrealism in Europe in 1920’s and 1930’s) • Early literary influences Jorge Luis Borges, Mikhail Bulgakov, Lewis Carroll, Günter Grass, James Joyce (admires Thomas Pynchon)

•. Midnight’s Children 1981, Booker Prize „The Prophet’s Hair • Midnight’s Children 1981, Booker Prize „The Prophet’s Hair published the same year (Atta, Huma, their father Hashim, the thief Sheikh Sín) • The Satanic Verses 1988 (Farishta, Chamcha and Allie Cone) Fatwa, Ayatollah Khomeini, translator attacked and killed • „If The Satanic Verses are anything, it is a migrant’s-eye view of the world…those who oppose teh novel most vociferously today are of the opinion that intermingling with a different culture will inevitably weaken and ruin their own. I am of the opposite opinion.”—from „In Good Faith” 1990 • The Ground Beneath Her Feet 1999, a modern variation of the Orpheus/Eurydice myth and a history of rock music (song adapted by U2)

• „We need all of us, whatever our background, to constantly examine the stories inside which and with which we live. We all live in stories, so called grand narratives. Nation is a story. Family is a story. Religion is a story. Community is a story. We all live within and with these narratives. And it seems to me that a definition of any living vibrant society is that you constantly question those stories. That you constantly argue about the stories. In fact the arguing never stops. The argument itself is freedom. It's not that you come to a conclusion about it. And through that argument you change your mind sometimes. … And that's how societies grow. When you can't retell for yourself the stories of your life then you live in a prison. … Somebody else controls the story. … Now it seems to me that we have to say that a problem in contemporary Islam is the inability to re-examine the ground narrative of the religion. … The fact that in Islam it is very difficult to do this, makes it difficult to think new thoughts.” –from 2006 interview

•. taught at Emory University in Atlanta and New York University since • taught at Emory University in Atlanta and New York University since 2015 as Distinguished Writer in Residence • has made cameo appearances in several films, including Bridget Jones’ Diary • in 2007 he was knighted, in 2010 he was placed on an Al-Qaeda hit list • Criticized Charlie Hebdo shooting in 2015 „Religion, a medieval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. ‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.” on PEN site

Kazuo Ishiguro (stone, black)

•. born in Nagasaki, Japan in 1954, family moved to • born in Nagasaki, Japan in 1954, family moved to England in 1960 (his father, an oceanographer began research at the National Institute of Oceanography) • studied English and Philosophy the University of Kent and creative writing at the University of East Anglia • became a British citizen in 1982 • began his career writing several songs for jazz singer Stacey Kent

• An Artist of the Floating World (1986) artist Masuji Ono • The Remains of the Day (1989) the butler Stevens and Miss Kenton, Lord Darlington, for which he won the Booker Prize • „A Village after Dark” 2001 in The New Yorker • "I tend to be attracted to pre-war and postwar settings because I’m interested in this business of values and ideals being tested, and people having to face up to the notion that their ideals weren’t quite what they thought they were before the test came." • influenced by Dostoevsky and Proust

„Now I think of it, Axl, there may be something in what you’re always saying. It’s queer the way the world’s forgetting people and things from only yesterday and the day before that. Like a sickness come over us all.”

„What did you hope to gain, sir, preventing not just your wife but even yourself grieving at your son’s resting place?’ ’Gain? There was nothing to gain, boatman. It was just foolishness and pride. And whatever else lurks in the depths of a man’s heart.”

„And I think now it’s no single thing changed my heart, but it was gradually won back by the years shared between us. That may be all it was, boatman. A wound healed slowly, but heal it did.”