Books Written by Salman Rushdie

A British-American novelist, born in Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1947, best known for Midnight’s Children, which won the Booker Prize in 1981, and for The Satanic Verses (1988). That novel led Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini to call for his death in 1989, which made him a symbol of free expression; in 2022 he survived a knife attack on stage in New York State. He has written fifteen novels, and was knighted in 2007 for services to literature.

Yes, he is alive. He survived the stabbing of 12 August 2022 but is blind in his right eye. He returned to public life in May 2023, testified at his attacker’s trial in February 2025, and has since published Knife (2024) and The Eleventh Hour (2025).

He is 79 (as of 2026). He was born on 19 June 1947 in Bombay, now Mumbai, in British India, eight weeks before India became independent.

All three, at different times. He was born an Indian citizen, became British in 1964 and acquired American citizenship in 2016. He moved to England in 1961 to attend Rugby School and studied history at King’s College, Cambridge, graduating in 1968.

In New York. He has lived in the United States since 2000, after years in Britain under police protection.

No; he is an atheist, raised in a liberal Muslim family. In a 2006 PBS interview he called himself a “hardline atheist”. In December 1990, under the fatwa, he issued a statement reaffirming his Muslim faith, which he later called perhaps his lowest point.

No, he has not won the Nobel Prize, although he is often named as a contender. He was knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours of June 2007 “for services to literature” and made a Companion of Honour in 2022. His other prizes include the Booker Prize (1981), the PEN Pinter Prize (2014) and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (2023).

sul-MAHN RUSH-dee, with the stress on the second syllable of Salman and the first of Rushdie. Dictionary.com gives /sʌlˈmɑːn/ and /ˈrʌʃ di/. A common misspelling is “Salmon” Rushdie.

He was stabbed on stage. On 12 August 2022, as he was about to give a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York State, a man ran onto the stage and stabbed him repeatedly in the face, neck and abdomen. He survived with injuries to his liver and hand and lost the sight in one eye.

Yes, he is blind in his right eye after the 2022 attack. He does not wear an eye patch: at his first public appearance afterwards, the PEN America gala in New York on 18 May 2023, he wore glasses with a black right lens.

Hadi Matar, then 24, from Fairview, New Jersey. A New York state jury found him guilty of attempted murder and assault in February 2025, and in May 2025 he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. In July 2026 a federal jury also convicted him of terrorism offences, including attempting to provide material support to Hizballah; he faces up to life in prison and is due to be sentenced on 3 November 2026.

Yes, in Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder (2024), which covers the stabbing, his recovery and an imagined conversation with his attacker. Alex Gibney’s documentary based on it, Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie, premiered at Sundance in January 2026.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s supreme leader, on 14 February 1989. Many Muslims considered parts of The Satanic Verses (1988), especially dream sequences about a prophet named Mahound, an insult to the Prophet Muhammad; the book was banned in India and other countries and burned at protests. The fatwa called for the death of Rushdie and his publishers, and the book’s Japanese translator, Hitoshi Igarashi, was murdered in July 1991.

Yes, it has never been revoked. In 1998 Iran’s government said it would “neither support nor hinder” attempts on his life, but in 2017 Ayatollah Khamenei said “the decree is as Imam Khomeini issued”, and a semi-official Iranian foundation has offered a bounty of more than $3 million. After the 2022 attack Iran denied involvement but blamed Rushdie himself.

More than a decade. From February 1989 he lived under British police protection, moving between addresses under the alias Joseph Anton, made from the first names of Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov; in 2012 he said “it ended up being more than a decade”. He tells the story in Joseph Anton (2012).

He was not formally exiled, but he did not visit India for more than twelve years, which he called a “long exile”, and said being denied a visa was “a deep wound”; he returned in April 2000. India banned the book’s import in October 1988. India banned its import in October 1988. In November 2024 the Delhi High Court ruled that, because the original customs notification could not be found, it must be presumed not to exist, and the book went back on sale in India.

Fifteen novels, from Grimus (1975) to Victory City (2023), plus two story collections, two memoirs and several books of essays. This page lists 25: the 14 key books and 11 more in the bibliography.

His key books in order: Midnight’s Children (1981), Shame (1983), The Satanic Verses (1988), Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990), East, West (1994), The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995), The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999), Shalimar the Clown (2005), The Enchantress of Florence (2008), Joseph Anton (2012), Quichotte (2019), Victory City (2023), Knife (2024) and The Eleventh Hour (2025).

Midnight’s Children, his Booker winner and the book that set the pattern for everything after. If its length puts you off, Haroun and the Sea of Stories is short and shows the same gifts.

Midnight’s Children (1981) among readers and critics: it won the Booker Prize and was later voted the best of all Booker winners twice. The Satanic Verses (1988) is more widely known because of the fatwa.

It is a novel about migration. Two Indian actors, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, fall from a hijacked plane over the English Channel and are transformed into an angel and a devil as they try to make lives in London; dream sequences about a prophet called Mahound ask, in the novel’s words, “How does newness enter the world?” Published in September 1988, it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Whitbread Novel Award.

It follows Saleem Sinai, born in Bombay at the stroke of midnight on 15 August 1947, as India becomes independent, whose life mirrors the country’s history. Yes, in 1981 for Midnight’s Children. The same novel won the Booker of Bookers in 1993 and the public vote for the Best of the Booker in 2008. He was also shortlisted for Shame, The Satanic Verses, The Moor’s Last Sigh and Quichotte.

A retelling of Don Quixote in modern America. Ismail Smile, an ageing pharmaceutical salesman obsessed with television, drives across the country with an imagined son, Sancho, to win the love of a TV star, while a second story follows the writer who is inventing him. It was published in 2019 and shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

The Eleventh Hour (2025), five stories about late life and death, his first fiction since the 2022 attack. Before it came Knife (2024), and in 2026 the National Book Foundation announced its lifetime achievement medal for him.

The American poet and novelist Rachel Eliza Griffiths. They married in 2021, and she is at the centre of his memoir Knife (2024).

Five times. His wives were Clarissa Luard (1976–1987), the novelist Marianne Wiggins (1988–1993), Elizabeth West (1997–2004), the model and television presenter Padma Lakshmi (2004–2007) and Rachel Eliza Griffiths (since 2021). He has two sons; Haroun and the Sea of Stories was written for the elder, Zafar.

He has a cameo as himself in Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) and appeared as himself in Curb Your Enthusiasm in 2017. He was never on Seinfeld: in the episode “The Implant” (1993) Kramer is convinced he has seen Rushdie at his health club, but the man in the sauna is a lookalike.

Yes. He wrote the lyrics of “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, taken from his 1999 novel of the same name, and U2 set them to music for the soundtrack of Wim Wenders’s film The Million Dollar Hotel (2000). He also joined U2 on stage at Wembley Stadium on 11 August 1993.