Salman Rushdie: “The world has abandoned realism”
The novelist on the threat to free speech, facing his attacker, and why writing Knife gave him back “the power”.
BySalman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie’s warning bell
His memoir Knife is a defence of free speech for a new age of intolerance. We should listen.
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Andrew Wylie’s rules for life
America’s most feared literary agent on his friend Salman Rushdie, what Sally Rooney taught him, and how he has thrived…
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Why Salman Rushdie’s imagination cannot be stopped
In his first interview since the attack on his life, the novelist refuses to be defined as target or victim.
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Ian McEwan’s long look back
The novelist on Liz Truss, Salman Rushdie, and why he finally decided to write his own story into his new…
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France and the fatwa
The attack on Salman Rushdie has exposed the deepening fault lines in French culture.
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Storytelling must prevail in a world in which democracy is under threat
The attack on Salman Rushdie was not an isolated incident, but connected to the political and cultural changes we are…
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How the fatwa against Salman Rushdie changed British identity
In 1989 a new global conflict began that still defines our time: a war of power, wealth and dogma.
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Leader: In defence of the open society
A healthy liberal democracy must guarantee freedom of expression; it must not guarantee freedom from offence.
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From the NS archive: Do you dare like this book?
3 March 1989: The challenge the fatwa against Salman Rushdie sets all writers.
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It’s crass to blame cancel culture for what happened to Salman Rushdie
Having a bounty placed on your head by an ayatollah isn’t the same as being mocked on Twitter.
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Salman Rushdie shows us that free speech is life itself
Rushdie knows how vital, how serious the business of storytelling is. Yet in my encounters with him he never took…
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The attack on Salman Rushdie is an attack on a global community of writers and readers
The freedom of expression and imagination that the novelist has bravely championed for so long is under renewed assault.
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Salman Rushdie stabbed on stage in New York
The Booker Prize-winning novelist remains in hospital after being stabbed in the neck, more than 30 years after the Iranian…
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The paradoxes and platitudes of Salman Rushdie
In a new collection of essays, the author reveals the difficulty of reconciling his belief in multiplicity and ambiguity with a kind of…
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