Salman Rushdie, one of the most celebrated authors of our time, will join the faculty of Emory University as Distinguished Writer in Residence and place his literary archive at Emory’s Robert W. Woodruff Library.

In making the announcement, Emory President James Wagner said “Salman Rushdie is not only one of the foremost writers of our generation, he is also a courageous champion of human rights and freedom.”

Rushdie, is the celebrated author of nine novels including Midnight’s Children (1981), Shame (1983), The Satanic Verses (1988), The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995), and, most recently, Shalimar the Clown (2005).

Midnight’s Children is widely regarded as a masterpiece of world literature; in 1993 it was selected as “the Booker of the Bookers,” the best novel published in the twenty-five year history of Britain’s prestigious Booker Prize. Rushdie is equally well-known, however, for the world-wide uproar that greeted his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, for being condemned to death by the Ayatollah Khomeini, and for the ensuing debate over freedom of expression that those events prompted. Iran revoked the fatwa on Rushdie’s life in 1998 and he has since then resumed a more public role including serving for the past two years as President of PEN’s American Center where he was a vocal advocate for persecuted writers around the world.

The Rushdie papers include multiple drafts of all of Rushdie’s novels and other writings from Grimus (1975) to Shalimar the Clown (2005), including manuscripts of two unpublished novels and other writings. The papers also contain a large quantity of correspondence with a wide literary circle, materials documenting Rushdie’s life under the fatwa, notebooks and journals maintained since 1973, photographs and other related personal and literary papers. Once processing is completed, the Salman Rusdie papers will be the primary resource for all subsequent studies of Rushdie’s life and work.

For more details please visit the Emory University Office of Media Relations Press Release

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