Special thanks to @amaranthinepoetry for recommending Salman Rushdie to discuss!
❝Memory's truth, because memory has its own special kind.❞
-- Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children
British-Indian novelist writer, full name Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie, whose allegorical novels focus on historical and philosophical issues using characterization, humor, and melodramatic prose style. His writings hones in on sensitive religious and political subjects that has made him a controversial figure. He was born on June 19, 1947 in Bombay, India and now he lives in Mumbai, India. He was an only son of a wealthy Indian businessman and a school teacher. He graduated from The Rugby School, a boarding school in Warwickshire, England and then attended King's College at the University of Cambridge, studying history.
In 1970s, he worked in London as an advertising copywriter. His first published novel was Grimus in 1975. His second popular novel was Midnight's Children that was published in 1981, he received the Booker Prize. The story is about India's complicated history through a pickle-factory worker named Saleem Sinai. Rushdie's fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, received a different reaction. There were adventures within the novel depicted a character modeled on the Prophet Muhammad that lead to controversy.
He has written multiple novels and short stories ranging from Imaginary Homelands (1991), The Moor's Last Sigh (1995), Fury (2001), The Enchantress of Florence (2008), and his most recent novel is Quichotte (2019) which was inspired by Cervantes's Don Quixote. In 2007, Rushdie was knighted. Midnight's Children has a film adaption, for which he has drafted the screenplay, was released in 2012.
Discussion Questions:
Which Rushdie's novel or short story have you read recently?
What element, as a reader, do you enjoy more: characterization, humor, or prose style? And why?
Rushdie wrote novels and short stories, as a writer which length do you write? Less than 20,000 words completed story? Or 50,000 words or more?
Always open to additional questions and comments on about Salman Rushdie and his works.
If there is another author you would like to see a discussion on, please post your suggestion in the comments below for a chance to be featured in a future chapter!
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