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Spokane, Washington April 15-23, 2005 |
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| Salman Rushdie Best-selling novelist and public intellectual Salman Rushdie will take his audience on a provocative journey into the world of contemporary literature, politics, culture and philosophy as he reads from his latest book, Step Across This Line: Collected Non-Fiction, 1992-2002 at the 7th Annual Inland Northwest Literary Arts "Get Lit!" Festival on April 23, 2005. Rushdie is perhaps best known as the author of Midnight's Children (1981) and The Satanic Verses (1987). The latter novel, deemed sacrilegious by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeni, brought him under a fatwa in 1989. Rushdie went on to produce some of his most compelling work, including The Moor's Last Sigh and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, while living in exile under the constant threat of death. His most recent book, Step Across This Line, explores his own reaction to the fatwa, as well as reactions of the media and various governments. In most of his works, Rushdie draws on his unique upbringing and personal history to make bold statements about modern life. Born in Bombay, India in 1947, two months before India's first day of independence, Rushdie comes from a wealthy Muslim family. He was educated in England and, for a time, lived in Pakistan with his family. He worked as a journalist in Pakistan before returning to England. He found work as a copywriter for an advertising firm and wrote the book Midnight's Children about India, the country he hadn't seen in years. The book was a huge success, among both westerners and Indians. It won the Booker Prize, and Rushdie became the leader of so-called "post colonial literature." When Rushdie's 1987 novel, The Satanic Verses, was published, Muslims took offense. In the book, Rushdie makes obscure jokes about the Islamic religion, names the workers in a Mecca brothel after the Prophet Muhammed's wives, and suggests the Koran is not the direct word of God. The book was banned in some places and burned in others. There were bomb threats called into the publishing house and a riot in Kashmir. The Ayatollah Khomeini announced that "all zealous Muslims in the world" should try to find Rushdie wherever he was and kill him. Rushdie went into hiding for nine years. An astute and informed observer of events in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and other hot spots, Rushdie has experienced the threat of modern terrorism first hand. For years he lived under the constant threat of death from the very kind of religious extremism that today is driving much of the violence and terror we see in the daily headlines. Rushdie's first hand experience allows him to vividly understand and describe the way the world has changed. Where in the past, global tensions were divided along country lines and were 'visible', now our safety concerns rest on the 'invisible' threat of terrorism and as a result, our protagonists aren't accountable to the same sort of public reckoning that they used to be. Like his best-selling novels and widely acclaimed essays, Rushdie's live presentations offer a challenging and enlightening look at modern life. Displaying the same wit and charm in person as he does in his writing, Rushdie explores many of the themes that he has covered so provocatively in his books: freedom of expression, religion and its relationship to popular culture and modern society, current events at home and abroad, and the role of the artist in society. Salman Rushdie | Rita Dove | David Sedaris | Bob Edwards | Robert Bly |  | ||||||||
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