Rushdie, Salman
Salman Rushdie was born in what was then Bombay in 1947. He studied history at King’s College, Cambridge. He published his first novel, Grimus, in 1975 but it was his second that established his reputation. Midnight’s Children (1981) won the Booker Prize. It was his 1988 book The Satanic Verses, however, which changed his life as a fatwa was declared which necessitated his going into hiding for some years. Subsequent books include Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990), The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995), The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999), Shalimar the Clown (2005) and Luka and the Fire of Life (2010). In 2007 he was knighted for services to literature.