1. Salman Rushdie

2. Salman Rushdie: Biography
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.

3. Published Works (Narrative style: magical realism)
•Grimus (1975)
•Midnight's Children (1981)
•Shame (1983)
•The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey (1987)
•The Satanic Verses (1988)
•Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990)
•Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981–1991 (1992)
•East, West (1994)
•The Moor's Last Sigh (1995)
•The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999)
•Fury (2001)
•Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992–2002 (2002)
•The East is Blue (essay, 2004)
•Shalimar the Clown (2005)

4. •Midnight's Children (1981) •The Satanic Verses (1988)
Major Works
•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)

5. Fatwa! And 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.

6. Fatwa! And The Satanic Verses
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 (because Khomeini died and fatwas can only be lifted by those who issue them)

7. The Satanic Verses
Specifically controversial in the Muslim community due to blasphemous references to Mohammad.
Book banned in India and burned in demonstrations in the United Kingdom.
In mid-February 1989, following a violent riot against the book in Pakistan, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Supreme Leader of Iran and a Shi’a Muslim scholar, issued a fatwa calling on all good Muslims to kill Rushdie and his publishers, or to point him out to those who can kill him if they cannot themselves.

8. Fatwa! And The Satanic Verses
Rushdie continues to maintain tight security
frequently travels between homes in England, the United States, and India
makes public appearances and grants interviews.

9. The Satanic Verses
Rushdie has not been physically harmed, but others connected with the book have suffered violent attacks.
Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese language translator of the book, was stabbed to death on 11 July 1991;
Ettore Capriolo, the Italian language translator, was seriously injured in a stabbing the same month;
William Nygaard, the publisher in Norway, barely survived an attempted assassination in Oslo in October 1993, and Aziz Nesin, the Turkish language translator, was the intended target in the events that led to the Sivas massacre on 2 July 1993 in Sivas, Turkey, which resulted in the deaths of 37 people.

10. How does this relate to Haroun?
While Rushdie was writing The Satanic Verses his 9 year old son Zafar said it was wrong that he didn't write books that children could read. Rushdie made a deal that the next book he wrote would be one his son might enjoy reading.
The germ of the story was bath-time stories he told Zafar. Rushdie says: "I would have these basic motifs, like the Sea of Stories, but each time I would improvise--not only to please him but to test myself, to see if I could just say something and take it elsewhere."
He began to write the novel in the summer of 1989, a few months after the fatwa.

11. How does this relate to Haroun?
Knowing what you know about Rushdie’s life and the climate in which he wrote Haroun, what predictions can you make about this book?
Respond in your journal after 27.1.