A Salute to Sir Salman

I saw this news bit on the latest headlines feed on my Firefox browser and thought I'd share. Salman Rushdie was knighted. That's pretty cool. We talked about him periodically throughout my Modern British Literature class, as his work has relevance in the modern political world as well as British literature of the last two or three decades. In case you didn't know, Salman Rushdie is the author of Midnight's Children and perhaps more (in)famously, The Satanic Verses, the novel which garnered a fatwah from the Ayatollah Khomeini. So much for freedom of speech. My professor "didn't have the courage" to assign either of his well known works, so we instead read Hanif Kurieshi's The Black Album. Anyway, I have a lot of respect for Sir Salman. He probably knew that the publication of The Satanic Verses would likely sign his death warrant, yet he published anyway, and the next year went into hiding. So congrats to him, I say. Maybe ten years of hiding was worth it.

Update: "Rushdie title 'may spark attacks'". Anyone surprised? Yeah, me neither.