After surviving a brutal knife attack, the Indian-British author is at the Frankfurt Book Fair. DW met him to discuss his new work.
Salman Rushdie appears at the Frankfurt Book Fair only 14 months after being stabbed at a public readingImage: Andrew Matthews/AP/picture alliance
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Salman Rushdie is making a rare public appearance at the Frankfurt Book Fair after he was brutally attacked in August 2022 and subsequently lost sight in one eye.
The author of the Booker-prize winning "Midnight's Children" (1981) and "The Satanic Verses" (1988), the work that triggered a fatwa or death sentence by the then-Iranian Ayatollah, is at the book fair to discuss his latest novel, "Victory City" — and to receive the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade on October 22.
DW caught up with the author to discuss his recovery and the power of literature.
DW: The Peace Prize of the German Book Trade is not only awarded for artistic work but also for international understanding and, in your case, your commitment to freedom in the world. What does this prize mean to you?
It's very important. I think all of us in the world of books are familiar with this prize. And a remarkable list of people have it. So I'm just very gratified to have my name added to that list.
How are you today, only 14 months after you were attacked and seriously injured?
Salman Rushdie: As you see, I'm feeling much recovered. I mean, I'm a little beaten up, but I'm alright.
In an interview with The New Yorker in February, you said that you have been suffering from writer's block since the attack. But a few days ago, your publisher announced that you will be publishing a new book ["Knife"] next spring, in which you deal with the attack and its consequences for you. How did you find your way back to writing?
It just came back. I think quite soon after I spoke to The New Yorker and that interview, I found that it began to flow again. So I'm happy that I've been able to write this book, which will come out in the spring.
Was there anything that helped you?
You know, just practice. I've been doing this job a long time. In the end, that's what gets you back to work.
Let's talk about your current book, "Victory City," which was published this year. It's a fictionalized telling of the rise and fall of the medieval city of Bisnaga in southern India, where men and women of diverse faiths were meant to be equal. But the empire perishes at the end because it abandons all its ideals. Is this a commentary on the contemporary world?
Well, I mean, if you write about history, to some extent, you're also writing about the present day because when we look at the past, we see what interests us, our own concerns reflected in earlier times.
But really, I wanted to create a world of my own. There are many writers who have done this, whether it's William Faulkner with his Yoknapatawpha, [Gabriel] Garcia Marquez with Macondo, or the Indian writer R. K. Narayan with Malgudi. I wanted a little world of my own, and this saga became that world.
Some critics have said that the book is a feminist novel. Was that your intention?
Well, one of the things that interested me doing the research for the book was that it's really true that in this very long ago period — this is the 14th and 15th century we're talking about — the place of women in society was very advanced in many ways. There was a lot of attention given to the education of girls, with almost as many schools for girls as for boys. Women worked in every walk of life: in the army, in the legal profession, or as merchant traders, et cetera.
That was true, but of course, the thing about history is that nothing is true all the time. And my character Pampa Kampana, who's in a way telling the story that I'm retelling, her own life goes up and down, there are moments when she's queen, and there are moments when she's an exile in the jungle.
And I think that's also true of the values of the society. There are moments when it's liberal, tolerant and open, and other moments when it becomes illiberal and intolerant. I guess human life is like that.
PEN: No freedom for the word
The German PEN center has listed author Salman Rushdie as an honorary member after the writer was attacked at an event in the US. The PEN center fights for the rights of persecuted authors and journalists.
The British-Indian author quickly earned the ire of Iran's Ayatollah after publishing his book "Satanic Verses" in 1988. The book makes several references to figures in Christianity and Islam, leading Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa against the writer and calling on Muslims all over the world to kill him. The book's Japanese translator was assasinated in 1991.
Maria Ressa is co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Rappler online news portal in the Philippines. Previously, she worked as a reporter for CNN. In the Philippines, the Nobel Peace Prize winner was the harshest critic of former President Rodrigo Duterte and his brutal anti-drug policy.
Image: Sikarin Thanachairy
Selahattin Demirtas
Turkish opposition politician Selahattin Demirtas ran against President Erdogan in the 2014 and 2018 elections. He has been held in a high-security prison since November 2016 for alleged terrorist propaganda. The European Court of Human Rights is demanding his release. Turkey, a member of the Council of Europe, is not responding. While in prison, Demirtas began writing.
Image: HDP
Rahile Dawut
Like hundreds of Uighur intellectuals, Rahile Dawut disappeared from public view without a trace in 2017. According to Human Rights Watch, the well-known ethnologist from Xinjiang was arrested during a crackdown on Uighur poets, academics, and journalists. She is presumably being held in an internment camp. The German PEN Center is campaigning for Rahile Dawut.
Image: Lisa Ross
Kakwenza Rukirabashaija
Rukirabashaija's case sheds light on the situation of freedom of expression in Uganda. The regime critic, author and lawyer was abducted and tortured in 2021 because of critical books and disrespectful tweets. With the help of PEN, he managed to escape to Germany, where he arrived in February 2022.
Image: Privat
Pham Doan Trang
Politically motivated charges and arrests — the government has targeted Vietnamese blogger and journalist Pham Doan Trang for her campaigning against environmental destruction, police violence and the oppression of minorities. Many human rights organizations and governments have been demanding her release after she was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2021.
Image: Thing Ngyen
Osman Kavala
When Turkish culture promoter Osman Kavala disappeared behind bars on flimsy charges in April 2022, it was not only PEN that protested. Amnesty International has also been calling for Kavala's release. The Council of Europe has repeatedly criticized Turkey's failure to comply with the European Convention on Human Rights.
Image: Kerem Uzel/dpa/picture alliance
Tsitsi Dangarembga
Tsitsi Dangarembga, author and filmmaker, is once again on trial in her native Zimbabwe for anti-government protests. She is accused of inciting public violence, breach of peace and bigotry. Dangarembga received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 2021. If found guilty, she faces several years in prison.
Image: Jens Kalaene/picture alliance/dpa
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The fatwa imposed on you over 34 years ago almost cost you your life during last year's attack. Why are autocrats, dictatorships and powerful people so afraid of stories of literature?
It's always been the case, you know, in many parts of the world that dictators fear poets. And it's very strange because writers have no armies.
What's your explanation?
I think they fear alternative versions of the world. One of the things about authoritarian rule is it also imposes its own version of the world to the exclusion of all others. Of course, all writers have their own version of the world and sometimes those don't please people in power, and so they try to silence them.
Amid the current war between Hamas and Israel, what can literature do to help?
Very little. You know, I always try not to overstate the power of literature. What writers can do — and what they are doing — is to try and articulate the incredible pain that many people are feeling right now and to bring that to the world's attention. I think writers everywhere are doing that right now, and that's probably the best we can do: articulate the nature of the problem.
So are you saying that words in this situation lose their power?
I just think there are things that words can't do, and what they can't do is stop wars.
One of the first casualties usually of war is truth because people start presenting their own propaganda version of events. And that's very difficult when you can't distinguish fact from fiction in a war zone.
So I think the problem reporters and journalists have to face now is how to establish the facts. And if journalism can do that, then it's performing a very valuable service.
Famous banned books over the decades
What do Galileo Galilei, Salman Rushdie and Harry Potter have in common? Books by or about them have been banned or challenged for diverse reasons.
Image: Simon & Schuster
Accused of blasphemy
Salman Rushdie has faced death threats for "The Satanic Verses," banned in several countries for its blasphemous portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad. On August 12, 2022, 24-year-old suspect Hadi Matar stabbed Rushdie multiple times just before he gave a public lecture in New York. Matar, who said Rushdie "was someone who attacked Islam," has pleaded not guilty for assault and attempted murder.
Image: Viking Press
Germany's Oscar nominee
"All Quiet on the Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque is an unvarnished look at life on the German front during World War I, as told by 20-year-old protagonist, Paul Baumer. Seen by many critics as a key anti-war book, it was banned and burned under the Nazi regime in Germany. The first German-language film adaptation of the book is now a best international film contender for the 2023 Oscars.
Image: Ballantine Books
A book about book burning
This 1953 dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury tells of an American society of the future where books are outlawed — and burnt if discovered. In the 1990s one US school district refused for the use of the word "goddamn." It has also been challenged on the basis of "questionable themes" like censorship, repression and religion. It is often regarded as one of Bradbury's best works.
Image: Simon & Schuster
When animals shouldn't speak
George Orwell's "Animal Farm" features a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where they can be equal, free, and happy. It was a swipe at corruption in the former Soviet Union, and was banned there until the 1980s. Schools in the United Arab Emirates also banned it in 2002 for depicting a talking pig, an animal considered unclean in Islam.
Image: Mary Evans Picture Library/picture alliance
'The Book That Should Not Be Read'
Despite its global acclaim and success that saw both children and adults devouring the entire "Harry Potter" series written by British author J.K.Rowling, the books have been targeted for removal from American school libraries as they dealt with ghosts, cults and witchcraft.
Image: United Archives/Impress/picture alliance
An anti-family children's book
"And Tango makes Three" is based on the true story of two male penguins in a New York zoo who raise a chick together. Pro-family organisations and individuals in the US criticized it and called for its censorship for being "anti-ethnic" and "anti-family" to "unsuited to age group." In Singapore, where homosexuality is illegal, it was first pulled from libraries but later moved to 'adult' sections.
Image: Little Simon
Not banned in the US
In Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel "Lolita" is about a middle-aged college professor who is obsessed with a twelve-year-old daughter whom he sexually exploits. In today's plain language, he's a pedophile. Unsurprisingly, it was banned as obscene over different periods in France, England, Argentina and New Zealand. Shockingly, it wasn't banned in the United States, though it was challenged.
Image: Rowohlt Taschenbuch;
A blanket ban
His debut, the 1987 short-story collection "Stick Out Your Tongue," highlighted the brutal Chinese occupation of Tibet. The government condemned the book as “spiritual pollution” and permanently banned Ma's books from the country. Ma himself was banned from China after the publication of his 2013 novel, "The Dark Road," about the impact of the nation’s one-child policy.
Image: Picador
Airing inconvenient truths
Said to be the most-challenged book in the US from 2010 to 2019, Publishers Weekly described this YA novel as the “Native American equivalent of 'Angela’s Ashes,' a coming-of-age story so well observed that its very rootedness in one specific culture is also what lends it universality, and so emotionally honest that the humor almost always proves painful.”
Image: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Nobel laureate who will not be silenced
Lawyer Shirin Ebadi was one of Iran's first female judges. After the 1979 revolution, she was dismissed from her position. Ebadi opened a legal practice and began defending people who were being persecuted by the authorities. Despite being the first female peace prize laureate from the Islamic world, her memoir "Iran Awakening" is banned in her native country for its political content.
Image: Rider
Enforcing racial stereotypes
Despite being acknowledged as one of the best American novels ever written, Mark Twain's 1884 novel "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is frequently challenged in the US over its depiction of racial stereotypes. The N-word is used 242 times in the novel, leading one administrator to brand it the “most grotesque example of racism I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Image: Gemeinfrei
(In)famous ban backtrack
Famed Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei's “Dialogue on the Two World Systems” published in 1632 was originally banned by the Catholic Church for suggesting that the earth orbited the sun, and he was accused of heresy back then. It wasn't until 1822 that this ban was lifted and finally in 1992, Pope John Paul II and the the Pontifical Academy of Sciences officially declared that Galileo was right.
