Salman Rushdie papers

"I would like to thank all those whose help and advice shaped this memorir: everyone at Emory University's MARBL archives, without whose ordering and cataloging work over the last several years my papers would have been in far too chaotic a condition to allow me even to think about this project..."
(From Acknowledgements: Salman Rushdie, Joseph Anton: A Memoir, New York: Random House, 2012)

Links to recent press for Joseph Anton: A Memoir:

The Telegraph: Joseph Anton by Salman Rushdie, review

NPR: Becoming 'Anton,' or How Rushdie Survived a Fatwa

New York Observer: Salman Rushdie Relives his Time in Hiding

Emory News Coverage of Salman Rushdie

Among MARBL's modern literary collections are the papers of Salman Rushdie, a critically acclaimed novelist and international figure. Rushdie's Midnight’s Children, published in 1981, was selected twice as “the Booker of the Bookers,” in honor of the prestigious Booker Prize's twenty-five and fortieth anniversaries. Rushdie is equally well-known for the international attention that followed the publication of his novel, The Satanic Verses in 1988, most notably the death sentence issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Rushdie continued to write during the years of the fatwa, and in 1990 Haroun and the Sea of Stories, a children's story that began as a bedtime story for his son Zafar, was published in England. Next, Rushdie released a collection of his essays from the previous decade entitled Imaginary Homelands: The Collected Essays, (published under the alternate title Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991 in the United States). In 1994, Rushdie released a collection of short fiction, East, West. Rushdie's next novel, The Moor's Last Sigh (1995), was shortlisted for the Booker McConnell Prize, in addition to winning the Whitbread Novel Award and earned Rushdie the distinction of Author of the Year by the British Book awards. In 1999, Rushdie published The Ground Beneath Her Feet, his interpretation of the Orpheus myth, with global pop stars as the main characters.

The papers document the developments in Rushdie's extensive literary career, from the publication of his first novel Grimus (1975), through Midnight's Children (1981) and The Satanic Verses (1988), to Shalimar the Clown, published in 2005. The collection also includes manuscripts of several unpublished novels written in the 1970s, such as Madame Rama and The Antagonist.

A more detailed description this collection is available in the EmoryFindingAids database.

For more information about the opening of Salman Rushdie's papers, please see Emory's press release.