“I always thought storytelling was like juggling [...
] you keep a lot of different tales in
the air, and juggle them up and down, and if you're good you don't drop any.”
-- Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Salman Rushdie
Ahmed Salman Rushdie was born on June 19, 1947 in Bombay, India, to a Muslim
family. His father was a businessman who had been educated at Cambridge University in
England and his grandfather was an Urdu poet. Rushdie's childhood was happy and he was
always surrounded by books. Rushdie remembers wanting to be a writer at the age five. At
fourteen, he was sent to England for schooling, attending the Rugby School in
Warwickshire. In 1964, his family, responding to the growing hostilities between India and
Pakistan, joined many emigrating Muslims by moving to Karachi, Pakistan.
These religious and political conflicts deeply affected Rushdie, although he stayed
in England to attend the King's College in Cambridge. He received his master's degree in
history in 1968. While in school, he had also joined the Cambridge Footlights theatre
company. Following his graduation, he began working in Pakistani television. Later, he
also acted with the Oval House theatre group in Kennington, England, and until 1981, he
wrote freelance copy for advertisers Ofilvy and Mather and Charles Barker. He shared the
experience of expatriation (living outside one's country of birth), with many writers of his
generation who were born in the Third World, and this is also considered as an important
theme in his work.
WORKS OF SALMAN RUSHDIE:
Salman Rushdie is considered to be one of the leading novelists of the twentieth
century and the most recognised novelist of the world. His style is often compared to magic
realism, which mixes religion, fantasy, and mythology into one composite reality. Rushdie
has been compared to authors such as Peter Carey, Emma Tennant, and Angela Carter.
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In 1975, Rushdie published his first novel. Grimus, a science fiction story inspired
by the twelfth century Sufi poem "The Conference of the Birds," However it was largely
ignored by both critics and the public. Rushdie's literary fortunes changed in 1981, when
the publication of his second novel, Midnight's Children, brought him international fame
and acclaim. The story is a comic allegory of Indian history, which tells the tale of 1001
children born after India's Declaration of Independence, each of whom possesses a magical
power. It won the Booker Prize for Fiction, the English-Speaking Union Award, the James
Tait Black Memorial Prize (fiction), and an Arts Council Writers' Award. In 1993 and
2008, it was named the "Booker of Bookers," acknowledging it as the best recipient of the
Booker Prize for Fiction in the award's history.
His third novel, Shame (1983), was commonly regarded as a political allegory of
Pakistani politics. It used a wealthy family as a metaphor for the country, and included
characters based on former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and General Muhammad
Zia-ul-Haq. It won the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, and made the short list for the
Booker Prize. In 1987, Rushdie published a short travel narrative titled The Jaguar's Smile
which was an account of a visit to Nicaragua in 1986.
In 1988, the publication of his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, which revolves
around two Indian actors who struggle with religion, spirituality, and nationality led
Rushdie to become the centre of a controversy. Although the book won the Whitbread
Award, Rushdie's free adaptation of Islamic history and theology caused the orthodox
Muslim Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran to issue a fatwa, a call for all obedient Muslims to
assassinate him. The book was banned and burned in many countries, and several people
involved with its publication were injured and killed. After the death threat, Rushdie
shunned publicity and went into hiding for many years, although he continued to write.
He also published a children's book in 1990, titled Haroun and the Sea of Stories. It
won the Writers' Guild Award (Best Children's Book). He next published a collection of
essays, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991 (1991), and a collection
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of short stories, East, West (1994). His next novel, The Moor's Last Sigh (1995), used a
family's history to explore the activities of right-wing Hindu terrorists, and the cultural
connections between India and the Iberian Peninsula. The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999)
was Rushdie's sixth novel, re-imagining the birth of modern rock music. He also published
the novel Fury in 2001, and Step Across This Line: Collected Non-fiction 1992-2002 in
2002. His novel Shalimar the Clown, which was published in 2005; was a finalist for the
Whitbread Book Awards.
In 2012, he published a memoir of his days in hiding, titled, Joseph Anton. It is a
combination of two of his favourite authors: Conrad and Chekhov. The book is written in
the third person perspective. Joseph Anton contains intimate portraits of Rushdie’s parents
and first wife, his years in hiding and his mixed relations with the police who were his
guardians, his literary and political friends and foes, as well as a whole string of tantalizing
biographical insights into the mind of the man behind the stories.
While many of Rushdie’s texts centres on the interpretation and role of religion in
society, Rushdie himself is an atheist. This upset many Muslims who previously regarded
Rushdie as a strong figure in the Muslim community. Combined with the unpopularity and
assassination attempts that followed the publication of The Satanic Verses, Rushdie issued
a statement in 1990 claiming that he had renewed his Muslim faith. He denounced the
blasphemous ideas that he wrote in The Satanic Verses and said that he was committed to
better understanding the religion and how it fit into the larger world narrative. He also
issued a request for the publisher to never again produce new copies of The Satanic Verses.
However, in 1995, he admitted the tactic was only a survival mechanism and that he still
does not subscribe to any religious beliefs. He considers the statement the biggest mistake
of his life.
He is an Honorary Professor in the Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association, a
Distinguished Fellow in Literature at the University of Anglia, a recipient of the 1993
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Austrian State Prize for European Literature, a recipient of the 1996 Aristeion Literary
Prize, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Commandeur de Arts et des
Lettres. He was also President of PEN American Centre from 2003-2005. In 2000, he
moved from London to New York. In 2006, he became the Distinguished Writer in
Residence at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Salman Rushdie is also co-author (with
Tim Supple and Simon Reade) of the stage adaptation of Midnight’s Children, premiered
by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2002.
SALMAN RUSHDIE’S LANGUAGE AND STYLE:
For an Indian settled abroad, it could be really an achievement to write about the
native customs and manners in an alien language i.e. English. Salman Rushdie’s success
in using the English language as a medium for the expression of creative urge lies in his
device of using ironical style for the expose of socio-political hypocrisy of Indian society
and to bring out other facts.
Salman Rushdie uses pure and limpid English which is easy and natural in flow but
the tone is always in an evolved and conscious medium, Rushdie’s English, in its structure
and form, is a moderate traditional instrument but obstructed one from the context in which
it was generated. The history, the social condition, the weather, the social environment are
presented in a wholly different settings in his different novels. Rushdie’s language
beautifully communicate the Indian sense and sensibility and reflects the various
happenings in the society.
Rushdie has used Indian historical events as a literary device to present an expose
of human predicament in Indian society. His observation is highly perceptive to the evils
of society but he neither condemns nor reacts. Rushdie’s novels are pungent satire on the
various ills, i.e. religious fundamentalism, communal clashes, caste and sect’s feelings,
political exploitation etc. of society. He is an artist of language and he uses straight-forward
language to convey philosophical thoughts and metaphysical speculations. He never
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hesitates to use many suitable Hindi or Urdu words like Gunda, Chup, Amma, Takht etc.
to provide clarity and suitability to his creative expressions.
Rushdie presents the life and the predicament of common people along with various
aspects of Indian society. He sketches lively scenes, the absurdities, the traditional make-
up of the situations all flavoured with the Indian historical events. The description are
authentic and marked with intense realism. The life of his protagonists often ends into a
realised life at the end of the novel. His characters are often wonderfully innocent and show
distinctive artistic presentation. Rushdie also uses common Indian English idioms without
bringing any change in their structure. His language is gentle and smooth and his
vocabulary is large and adequate enough to deal with the range of subject-matter. He often
uses lengthy and complex sentences.
His writing is marked with lucidity, clarity, simplicity and accuracy. The use of
simple and easy English language makes him successful in drawing alive philosophical
and historical sketches of men and events. His stylistic writing makes even simplest
incidents charming and interesting. Therefore one could state that the simplicity of
language, sincerity of art and gentle touch of humour is the secret of his artistic
performances. Rushdie’s novels satisfy Indians because the scenes, conventions, customs,
culture and characters are authentically Indian.
Rushdie is not a humourist but he often uses light humour wherever needed. His
language is almost devoid of imagery. His language is deceptively simple as the sentences
are straight-forward in composition and unremarkably lucid in diction. Rushdie’s art of
fiction, therefore, is based on the use of historical and political events dealt with the help
of individual characters.
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SALMAN RUSHDIE’S THEMES AND TECHNIQUE:
Salman Rushdie is a stylist of language who uses satire and social realism, except
in Grimus, to highlight follies, foibles and incongruities of society. His first novel Grimus
(1975) is endowed with mushroom magic images. Grimus is rather difficult novel for a
common reader and differs entirely from his later novels. Girmus, as Rushdie himself says,
was started by him when he was just ten years old and was finished in 1979.
In Midnight’s Children (1980), Rushdie seems to be talking about politics. The plot
of Grimus is more historical, whereas Midnight’s Children is more on the lines of a
Bildungsroman (a novel form dealing with a person’s early development). The hero of the
novel Saleem is born on the stroke of midnight and hence the novel was named as
Midnight’s Children. The novel is called as “autobiographical” as the hero Saleem and
Rushdie were born in the same part of the City Bombay and at the same time, there is a
direct collision with the individual with history. It is the moment in Indian history in which
Saleem spent his childhood claiming that he in some way can influence his great historical
events. The Bangladesh war and Emergency in India have influenced greatly the themes of
the novel. The Part-III of the novel is direct and more political than the earlier parts of the
book.
Shame (1983), banned in Pakistan is different from Rushdie’s earlier books. Shame
contains a number of stories, each story somehow interlinked with each other. In fact, both
Shame and Midnight’s Children closely follows the parallels on thematic patterns. Both
novels represent Rushdie’s satirical venom applied with merciless comic criticism to the
political mention of scenario in the two countries. And both are supremely grotesque
vehicles for linking fanciful family-tale and murky political history.
The Satanic Verses (1988), thematically based on Islamic history, is a plain attack on
religious fundamentalism. Rushdie’s another novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999)
refers to fictitious character Philoo Doodhwala caught in a certain goat scam. While his
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Temple Bar Music Centre highlights corruption in Indian politics. Rushdie's twelfth novel,
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights was published in September 2015.
Overall, his books have been translated into more than 40 languages.
Rushdie has realised fully the importance of historical facts in the fictional world.
Except his first novel Grimus, other two novels Midnight’s Children and Shame are purely
historical novels. In Midnight’s Children, Rushdie’s main aim was to relate private life to
public events and to explore the limits of individuality in a country as big, as populated and
culturally wide as India. Similar is the case of Shame for Pakistan to some extent. Shame
is closely related to the politics of Pakistan and Midnight’s Children is a novel about
struggle of independence, the partition and their repercussions.
Rushdie has used Indian historical events as a literary device to present and expose
the human predicament in Indian society. He presents the common rhythm of life through
the various aspects of Indian life. He sketches lively scenes, the absurdities, the pretentions,
the inner and outer excitements and the traditional makeup of the situations touched with
his Indian historical events. The entire authentic description is marked with intense realism.
His characters, at the prime stage of life, are wonderfully innocent and show distinctive
artistic presentation. Rushdie’s themes, characters, dialogues, straight forward statements
are able to vary the feelings and atmosphere of Indian society. His language is perfectly
capable of presenting the ideas and suitable for amusement of the readers of east and west.
His vocabulary is large and adequate enough to deal with the range of subject matter. All
these factors combined together have placed his name at the top among all the Indo-British
novelists.
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CONCLUSION:
Novelist, essayist, travel writer and screenwriter, martyr for free speech and teller
of story as political statement, Rushdie has not only achieved the singular distinction of
being recognised as an artist in his own lifetime but is also arguably the most prominent
novelist of the late 20th century, both for his literary achievements and for the controversy
surrounding them. Salman Rushdie is a magician of words. Amidst controversies, puns,
metaphors and magic realism, he sculpts novels which have made him one of the most
highly praised authors in the ocean of literature. Engaging and thought provoking,
Rushdie’s works deal with intersections of Eastern and Western culture, as well as issues
of religion, life and death. , Rushdie has taken history as his subject and fictionalized it,
thus establishing a new genre. He has received almost every award in the course of a near
30-year career and has become the living image of the romantic writer; experienced,
knowledgeable and, equally at ease with the spreaders of pop culture and the intellectual
authorities of literary taste, rough critic of colonialism, be it political, social or cultural,
and, despite his deep connection to the events of his time he remains somehow removed
from the ordinary sphere of existence; abstract, aloof and distant.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Kumar, Singh Pramod. The Novels Of Salman Rushdie: A Critical Evaluation.
Jaipur: Book Enclave, 2001. English.
Ray, Mohit K. ; Kundu, Rama. Salman Rushdie Critical Essays Volume- I. New
Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2006. English.
