Salman Rushdie, the creator whose writing led to dying threats from Iran within the Nineteen Eighties, has been attacked and apparently stabbed within the neck as he was about to present a lecture in western New York.
An Related Press reporter witnessed a person storm the stage on the Chautauqua Establishment on Friday (Saturday morning AEST) and start punching or stabbing Rushdie as he was being launched.
The 75-year-old is an acclaimed creator who has additionally spent a part of his life dwelling in exile because of threats in opposition to him for a few of his work.
The place did Salman Rushdie develop up?
The Mumbai-born author – the son of a profitable Muslim businessman in India – was educated in England, first at Rugby Faculty and later on the College of Cambridge the place he acquired an MA diploma in historical past.
After school, he started working as an promoting copywriter in London, earlier than publishing his first novel, Grimus in 1975.
Rushdie's remedy of delicate political and non secular topics turned him right into a controversial determine.
Nevertheless it was the publication of his fourth novel The Satanic Verses in 1988 that has hounded him for greater than three many years.
What's The Satantic Verses?
Rushdie's e book The Satanic Verses has been banned in Iran since 1988, as many Muslims take into account it to be blasphemous.
Rushdie's personal web site describes the e book this manner:
"Set in a contemporary world stuffed with each mayhem and miracles, the story begins with a bang: the terrorist bombing of a London-bound jet in midflight. Two Indian actors of opposing sensibilities fall to earth, reworked into dwelling symbols of what's angelic and evil. That is simply the preliminary act in an impressive odyssey that seamlessly merges the precise with the imagined. A e book whose significance is eclipsed solely by its high quality, The Satanic Verses is a key work of our occasions."
Why is there a bounty on Salman Rushdie?
A yr after The Satanic Verses was printed, Iran's late chief Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie's dying, saying the e book was an insult on Islam and the Prophet Mohammed.
A bounty of greater than $US3 million ($4.22 million) has additionally been provided for anybody who kills Rushdie.
Iran's authorities has lengthy since distanced itself from Khomeini's decree, however anti-Rushdie sentiment has lingered. In 2012, a semi-official Iranian non secular basis raised the bounty for Rushdie from $US2.8 million to $US3.3 million ($3.94 million to $4.65 million).
Rushdie dismissed that risk on the time, saying there was "no proof" of individuals being within the reward.
That yr, Rushdie printed a memoir, Joseph Anton, in regards to the fatwa. The title got here from the pseudonym Rushdie had used whereas in hiding.
Was there backlash in Australia?
Sure. On the time of the publishing of The Satantic Verses, demonstrations passed off in Australia the place Muslim Australians denounced the e book.
An estimated 500 to 800 Muslims protested in Arncliffe, Sydney in 1989.
The group marched to their native mosque in opposition to the publication of e book, with massive indicators saying they had been in assist of Komeini's ruling in opposition to Rushdie.
After Dymocks pulled the e book off their cabinets as a consequence of threats, the Australian Society of Authors held a pro-Salman Rushdie demonstration exterior one in every of their shops.
What else has Rushdie written?
He has authored 13 novels, together with Midnight's Youngsters, which received the Booker Prize in 1981.
The novel was additionally named the Better of the Booker — one of the best winner within the award's 40 yr historical past — by a public vote.
Midnight's Youngsters has beforehand been carried out on stage in London and New York and changed into a movie in 2012. Then in 2018, a sequence adaptation of the e book was introduced by Netflix.
In the meantime, his novel The Floor Beneath Her Ft, which winds the Orpheus fantasy by way of a narrative set on the planet of rock music, was changed into a track by U2 that includes lyrics written by Rushdie.
His books have been translated into over forty languages.
The celebrated creator and winner of the world's high literary prizes has additionally been awarded a knighthood within the 2007 Queen's Birthday Honours record and he is been granted France's highest inventive honour, Commandeur within the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Rushdie has additionally appeared as himself in TV comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm and film Bridget Jones' Diary.