Anglo-Indian author Salman Rushdie is one of the leading novelists of the twentieth century. His style is often likened to magic realism, which mixes religion, fantasy, and mythology into one composite reality. He has been compared to such authors as Peter Carey, Emma Tennant, and Angela Carter. His somewhat flippant and familiar way of treating religion has provoked criticism, however, peaking in the Ayatollah of Iran's issue of a fatwa (a death order) in response to The Satanic Verses, his fourth novel.
Ahmed Salman Rushdie was born on June 19, 1947 in Bombay, India, to a middle-class Muslim family. His father was a businessman, educated in Cambridge, and his grandfather was an Urdu...