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- author: 92ndStreetY
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- A. L. Kennedy
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92nd Street Y
Coordinates: 40°46′59″N 73°57′10″W / 40.7830°N 73.9527°W / 40.7830; -73.9527
92nd Street Y (92Y) is a multifaceted cultural institution and community center located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States, at the corner of E. 92nd Street and Lexington Avenue. Its full name is 92nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association (YM-YWHA). It is not part of the YMCA.
Founded in 1874 as the Young Men's Hebrew Association by German-Jewish professionals and businessmen, 92nd Street Y has grown into an organization guided by Jewish principles but serving people of all races and faiths.
92Y serves over 400,000 people annually and offers over 200 programs a day. Its 33 program areas include community outreach; lectures and panel discussions; Jewish education and culture; concerts featuring classical, jazz and popular music; humanities classes; dance performances; literary readings; film screenings; parenting programs; camps; a nursery school; fitness classes, singles programs; seniors programs; and a residence program that rents rooms in the Y's main building at 92nd Street and Lexington Avenue.
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Atlanta
Atlanta (
/ətˈlæntə/, stressed /ætˈlæntə/, locally /ætˈlænə/) is the capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia with a 2010 population of 420,003. Atlanta is the cultural and economic center of the Atlanta metropolitan area, which is home to 5,268,860 people and is the ninth largest in the U.S. It is a major component of a growing southeastern megalopolis known as the Piedmont Atlantic Megaregion. Atlanta is the county seat of Fulton County, and a small portion of the city extends eastward into DeKalb County.
Atlanta began as a settlement located at the terminus of a railroad line, and it was incorporated in 1845. Today, the city is a major business city and the primary transportation hub of the Southeastern United States (via highway, railroad, and air), with Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport being the world's busiest airport since 1998. The World Cities Study Group at Loughborough University rated Atlanta as an "alpha(-) world city." With a gross domestic product of US$270 billion, Atlanta's economy ranks 15th among world cities and sixth in the nation. The city is a center for services, finance, information technology, government, and higher education. Metro Atlanta contains the country's third largest concentration of Fortune 500 companies, and is the world headquarters of The Coca-Cola Company, Turner Broadcasting, The Home Depot, AT&T Mobility, UPS, and Delta Air Lines. As of 2010, Atlanta is the seventh most visited city in the United States, with over 35 million visitors per year.
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Behesht-e Zahra
Behesht-e Zahra (Persian: بهشت زهرا,The Paradise of Zahara), is the largest cemetery in Iran. Located in the southern part of metropolitan Tehran, it is connected to the city by a metro line. The cemetery has been one of the inspirations for the popular webcomic, Zahra's Paradise.
In the early 1950, all the cemeteries in Tehran were replaced by several large new ones outside the precincts of the capital. Behesht-e Zahran was built in 1951 near the City of Qom and Opened in 1952. The first person that buried in Behesht-e Zahra was Mohammad-Taghi Khial.
Many of the deceased soldiers of the Iran–Iraq War are buried there. A number of Iranian officials, including Ruhollah Khomeini (Leader of Iranian Revolution), Mohammad-Ali Rajai (Former President of Iran), Mohammad Javad Bahonar (Former Prime Minister) are also buried there.
Among its more famous residents are:
Coordinates: 35°32′17″N 51°22′30″E / 35.538°N 51.375°E / 35.538; 51.375
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Chapman University
Chapman University is a private, non-profit university located in Orange, California affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Known for its blend of liberal arts and professional programs, Chapman University encompasses seven schools and colleges: Lawrence and Kristina Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, Wilkinson College of Humanities and Social Sciences, George L. Argyros School of Business and Economics, Schmid College of Science, College of Performing Arts, School of Law and College of Educational Studies. For the 2010-2011 academic year, Chapman University enrolled 6,398 students.
The year 2011 marked the 150th anniversary of Chapman University's founding as Hesperian College (see below), and was celebrated with a series of on-campus events.
Founded as Hesperian College, the school began classes on March 4, 1861. Hesperian admitted students of both sexes and all races—a radical educational concept at that time.
In 1920, the assets of Hesperian College were absorbed by California Christian College, which held classes in downtown Los Angeles. In 1934, the school was renamed after the chairman of its board of trustees (and primary benefactor), C.C. Chapman.
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Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia (
i/ˈdʒɔrdʒⁱə/) is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. Named after King George II of Great Britain, Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788. It declared its secession from the Union on January 21, 1861, and was one of the original seven Confederate states. It was the last state to be restored to the Union, on July 15, 1870. Georgia is the 24th most extensive and the 9th most populous of the 50 United States. From 2007 to 2008, 14 of Georgia's counties ranked among the nation's 100 fastest-growing, second only to Texas. Georgia is known as the Peach State and the Empire State of the South.Atlanta is the state's capital and its most populous city.
Georgia is bordered on the south by Florida; on the east by the Atlantic Ocean and South Carolina; on the west by Alabama; and on the north by Tennessee and North Carolina. The northern part of the state is in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a mountain range in the Appalachian Mountains system. The central piedmont extends from the foothills to the fall line, where the rivers cascade down in elevation to the continental coastal plain of the southern part of the state. The highest point in Georgia is Brasstown Bald, 4,784 feet (1,458 m); the lowest point is the Atlantic Ocean.
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Iran
Coordinates: 32°N 53°E / 32°N 53°E / 32; 53
Iran (i/ɪˈrɑːn/ or /aɪˈræn/;Persian: ایران [ʔiˈɾɒn] (
listen)), officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (Persian: جمهوری اسلامی ایران Jomhuri-ye Eslāmi-ye Irān), is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran", which in Persian means "Land of the Aryans", has been in use natively since the Sassanian era. It came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia ( /ˈpɜrʒə/ or /ˈpɜrʃə/). Both "Persia" and "Iran" are used interchangeably in cultural contexts; however, "Iran" is the name used officially in political contexts.
The 18th-largest country in the world in terms of area at 1,648,195 km2 (636,372 sq mi), Iran has a population of around 79 million. It is a country of particular geopolitical significance owing to its location in the Middle East and central Eurasia. Iran is bordered on the north by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. As Iran is a littoral state of the Caspian Sea, which is an inland sea, Kazakhstan and Russia are also Iran's direct neighbors to the north. Iran is bordered on the east by Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the south by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, on the west by Iraq and on the northwest by Turkey. Tehran is the capital, the country's largest city and the political, cultural, commercial and industrial center of the nation. Iran is a regional power, and holds an important position in international energy security and world economy as a result of its large reserves of petroleum and natural gas. Iran has the second largest proven natural gas reserves in the world and the fourth largest proven petroleum reserves.
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Lebanon
Lebanon (i/ˈlɛbənɒn/ or /ˈlɛbənən/; Arabic: لبنان Libnān or Lubnān, Lebanese Arabic: [lɪbˈneːn]), officially the Lebanese Republic (Arabic: الجمهورية اللبنانية al-Jumhūrīyah al-Libnānīyah, Lebanese Arabic: [elˈʒʊmhuːɾɪjje l.ˈlɪbneːnɪjje]), is a country in the East Mediterranean. It is bordered by Syria to the north and east, and Israel to the south. Lebanon's location at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian hinterland has dictated its rich history, and shaped a cultural identity of religious and ethnic diversity.
The earliest evidence of civilization in Lebanon dates back more than 7,000 years—predating recorded history. Lebanon was the home of the Phoenicians, a maritime culture that flourished for nearly 2,500 years (3000–539 BC). Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, the five provinces that comprise modern Lebanon were mandated to France. The French expanded the borders of Mount Lebanon, which was mostly populated by Maronite Catholics and Druze, to include more Muslims. Lebanon gained independence in 1943, and established a unique political system, known as confessionalism, a power-sharing mechanism based on religious communities – Bechara El Khoury who became independent Lebanon's first President and Riad El-Solh, who became Lebanon's first prime minister, are considered the founders of the modern Republic of Lebanon and are national heroes for having led the country's independence. French troops withdrew from Lebanon in 1946.
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Malaysia
Malaysia (i/məˈleɪʒə/ mə-LAY-zhə or i/məˈleɪsiə/ mə-LAY-see-ə) is a federal constitutional monarchy in Southeast Asia. It consists of thirteen states and three federal territories and has a total landmass of 329,847 square kilometres (127,350 sq mi) separated by the South China Sea into two similarly sized regions, Peninsular Malaysia and Malaysian Borneo. Land borders are shared with Thailand, Indonesia, and Brunei, and maritime borders exist with Singapore, Vietnam, and the Philippines. The capital city is Kuala Lumpur, while Putrajaya is the seat of the federal government. In 2010 the population exceeded 27.5 million, with over 20 million living on the Peninsula.
Malaysia has its origins in the Malay Kingdoms present in the area which, from the 18th century, became subject to the British Empire. The first British territories were known as the Straits Settlements, whose establishment was followed by the Malay kingdoms becoming British protectorates. The territories on Peninsular Malaysia were first unified as the Malayan Union in 1946. Malaya was restructured as the Federation of Malaya in 1948, and achieved independence on 31 August 1957. Malaya united with Sabah, Sarawak, and Singapore on 16 September 1963, with si being added to give the new country the name Malaysia. However, less than two years later in 1965, Singapore was expelled from the federation. Since independence, Malaysia has had one of the best economic records in Asia, with GDP growing an average 6.5% for almost 50 years. The economy has traditionally been fuelled by its natural resources, but is expanding in the sectors of science, tourism, commerce and medical tourism.
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Mecca
Mecca ( /ˈmɛkə/; Arabic: مكة, Makkah, pronounced [ˈmækːɐ]) is a city in the Hejaz and the capital of Makkah province in Saudi Arabia. The city is located 70 km (43 mi) inland from Jeddah in a narrow valley at a height of 277 m (909 ft) above sea level. Its resident population in 2012 was 2 million, although visitors more than triple this number every year during Hajj period held in the twelfth Muslim lunar month of Dhu al-Hijjah.
As the birthplace of Muhammad and a site of the composition of the Quran, Mecca is regarded as the holiest city in the religion of Islam and a pilgrimage to it known as the Hajj is obligatory upon all able Muslims. The Hijaz was long ruled by Muhammad's descendants, the sharifs, either as independent rulers or as vassals to larger empires. It was absorbed into Saudi Arabia in 1925. In its modern period, Mecca has seen tremendous expansion in size and infrastructure. Because of this Mecca has lost many thousand years old buildings and archaeological sites. Today, more than 15 million Muslims visit Mecca annually, including several million during the few days of the Hajj. As a result, Mecca has become one of the most cosmopolitan and diverse cities in the Muslim world, although non-Muslims remain prohibited from entering the city.
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Mumbai
Mumbai /mʊmˈbaɪ/, also known as Bombay /bɒmˈbeɪ/, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the most populous city in India, and the fourth most populous city in the world, with a total metropolitan area population of approximately 20.5 million. Along with the neighbouring urban areas, including the cities of Navi Mumbai and Thane, it is one of the most populous urban regions in the world. Mumbai lies on the west coast of India and has a deep natural harbour. In 2009, Mumbai was named an Alpha world city. Mumbai is also the richest city in India, and has the highest GDP of any city in South, West or Central Asia.
The seven islands that came to constitute Mumbai were home to communities of fishing colonies. For centuries, the islands were under the control of successive indigenous empires before being ceded to the Portuguese and subsequently to the British East India Company. During the mid-18th century, Mumbai was reshaped by the Hornby Vellard project, which undertook the reclamation of the area between the seven constituent islands from the sea. Completed by 1845, the project along with construction of major roads and railways transformed Bombay into a major seaport on the Arabian Sea. Economic and educational development characterised the city during the 19th century. It became a strong base for the Indian independence movement during the early 20th century. When India became independent in 1947, the city was incorporated into Bombay State. In 1960, following the Samyukta Maharashtra movement, a new state of Maharashtra was created with Bombay as capital. The city was renamed Mumbai in 1996.
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Nicaragua
Nicaragua (i/ˌnɪkəˈrɑːɡwə/ nik-ə-RAH-gwə), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (Spanish: República de Nicaragua [reˈpuβlika ðe nikaˈɾaɣwa] ( listen)), is the largest country in the Central American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean lies to the west, and the Caribbean Sea to the east. The country's physical geography divides it into three major zones: Pacific lowlands; wet, cooler central highlands; and the Caribbean lowlands. On the Pacific side of the country are the two largest fresh water lakes in Central America—Lake Managua and Lake Nicaragua. Surrounding these lakes and extending to their northwest along the rift valley of the Gulf of Fonseca are fertile lowland plains, with soil highly enriched by ash from nearby volcanoes of the central highlands. Nicaragua's abundance of biologically significant and unique ecosystems contribute to Mesoamerica's designation as a biodiversity hotspot.
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Paddington
Coordinates: 51°31′02″N 0°10′23″W / 51.5172°N 0.1730°W / 51.5172; -0.1730
Paddington is a district within the City of Westminster, in central London, England. Formerly a metropolitan borough, it was integrated with Westminster and Greater London in 1965. Three important landmarks of the district are Paddington station, designed by the celebrated engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel and opened in 1847; St Mary's Hospital and Paddington Green Police Station (the most important high-security police station in the United Kingdom).
A major project called Paddington Waterside aims to regenerate former railway and canal land between 1998 and 2018, and the area is seeing many new developments.
The earliest extant reference to Padington, historically a part of Middlesex, was made in 1056.[citation needed]
In the later Elizabethan and early Stuart era, the rectory and associated estate houses were occupied by the Small (or Smale) family. Nicholas Small was a clothworker sufficiently well connected to have his new wife's (Jane Small) portrait painted by Holbein. Nicholas died in 1565 and his wife married again, to Nicholas Parkinson, who also resided in Paddington. Parkinson went on to be the Master of the Clothworker's company. Jane Small continued to live in Paddington after her second husband's death, and her manor house was big enough to have been let to Sir John Popham, the attorney general, in the 1580s. At this time there was an inn attached to the estate, named Blowers.
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Pakistan
Pakistan (
i/ˈpækɨstæn/ or i/pɑːkiˈstɑːn/; Urdu: پاکستان) (Urdu pronunciation: [paːkɪˈst̪aːn] (
listen)), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (Urdu: اسلامی جمہوریۂ پاکستان), is a sovereign country in South Asia. It sits at the crossroads of the strategically important regions of South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. It has a 1,046-kilometre (650 mi) coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by India to the east, Afghanistan to the west and north, Iran to the southwest and China in the far northeast. It is separated from Tajikistan by Afghanistan's narrow Wakhan Corridor in the north, and it shares a marine border with Oman.
The territory of modern Pakistan was the site of several ancient cultures, including the Neolithic Mehrgarh and the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilisation, and has undergone invasions or settlements by Hindu, Persian, Indo-Greek, Islamic, Turco-Mongol, Afghan and Sikh cultures. Thus the area has been ruled by numerous empires and dynasties, including the Indian Mauryan Empire, the Persian Achaemenid Empire, the Arab Umayyad Caliphate, the Mongol Empire, the Mughal Empire, the Durrani Empire, the Sikh Empire and the British Empire. As a result of the Pakistan Movement led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah and India's struggle for independence, Pakistan was created in 1947 as an independent nation for Muslims from the regions in the east and west of India where there was a Muslim majority. Initially a dominion, Pakistan adopted a new constitution in 1956, becoming an Islamic republic. A civil war in 1971 resulted in the secession of East Pakistan as the new country of Bangladesh.
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Soweto
Soweto (/sɵˈweɪtoʊ/, /sɵˈwɛtoʊ/, or /sɵˈwiːtoʊ/) is an urban area of the city of Johannesburg in Gauteng, South Africa, bordering the city's mining belt in the south. Its name is an English syllabic abbreviation for South Western Townships. Formerly a separate municipality, it is now incorporated in the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality, Suburbs of Johannesburg.
The history of African townships south west of Johannesburg that would later form Soweto was propelled by the increasing eviction of Africans by city and state authorities. Africans had been drawn to work on the gold mines that were established after 1886. From the start they were accommodated in separate areas on the outskirts of Johannesburg, such as Brickfields (Newtown). In 1904 British-controlled city authorities removed African and Indian residents of Brickfields to an "evacuation camp" at Klipspruit municipal sewage farm (not Kliptown, a separate township) outside the Johannesburg municipal boundary, following a reported outbreak of plague. Two further townships were laid out to the east and the west of Johannesburg in 1918. Townships to the south west of Johannesburg followed, starting with Pimville in 1934 (a renamed part of Klipspruit) and Orlando in 1935.
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A. S. Byatt
Dame Antonia Susan Duffy, DBE, known as A. S. Byatt (/ˈbaɪ.ət/BY-ət; born 24 August 1936, Sheffield) is an English novelist, poet and Booker Prize winner. In 2008, The Times newspaper named her on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.
Byatt was born as Antonia Susan Drabble, the daughter of John Drabble, QC, and Kathleen Bloor, a scholar of Browning. Byatt was educated at two independent schools, Sheffield High School and the Quaker Mount School, and noted in an interview in 2009 "I am not a Quaker, of course, because I'm anti-Christian and the Quakers are a form of Christianity but their religion is wonderful – you simply sat in silence and listened to the nature of things." She went on to Newnham College, Cambridge, Bryn Mawr in the United States, and Somerville College, Oxford. Sister to novelist Margaret Drabble and art historian Helen Langdon, Byatt lectured in the Department of Extra-Mural Studies of London University (1962–71), the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and from 1972 to 1983 at University College London.
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Adam Clayton
Adam Charles Clayton (born 13 March 1960) is a musician, best known as the bassist of the Irish rock band U2. Clayton has resided in County Dublin since the time his family moved to Malahide when he was five years old in 1965. Clayton is well known for his bass playing on songs such as "New Year's Day", "Bullet the Blue Sky", "With or Without You", "Mysterious Ways", "Get on Your Boots", and "Magnificent". His work on No Line on the Horizon has been cited as his best bass playing. He has worked on several solo projects throughout his career, such as his work with fellow band member Larry Mullen Jr. on the theme of 1996's Mission: Impossible. Clayton, as a part of U2, has won 22 Grammy awards.
Clayton is the elder child of Brian and Jo Clayton, born on 13 March 1960 in Chinnor, Oxfordshire, England. When Clayton was five years old, his family moved from Oxfordshire to Malahide, County Dublin, where Clayton's brother Sebastian was born. The Clayton family became friends with the Evans family, with their sons Dik and Dave (more commonly known as The Edge), who were both in the original group, Feedback, that spawned U2.
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Agota Kristof
Ágota Kristóf (Hungarian: Kristóf Ágota; October 30, 1935 – July 27, 2011) was a Hungarian writer who lived in Switzerland and wrote in French. Kristof received the European prize for French literature for The Notebook (1986). She won the 2001 Gottfried Keller Award in Switzerland and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 2008.
Agota Kristof was born in Csikvánd, Hungary on October 30, 1935. At the age of 21 she had to leave her country when the Hungarian anti-communist revolution was suppressed by the Soviet military. She, her husband (who used to be her history teacher at school) and their 4 month-old daughter escaped to Neuchâtel in Switzerland. After 5 years of loneliness and exile, she quit her work in a factory and left her husband. She started studying French and began to write novels in that language.
Kristof's first steps as a writer were in the realm of poetry and theater (John et Joe, Un rat qui passe), aspects of her writing that did not have as great an impact as her trilogy. In 1986 Kristof’s first novel, The Notebook appeared. It was the beginning of a moving trilogy. The sequel titled The Proof came 2 years later. The third part was published in 1991 under the title The Third Lie. The most important themes of this trilogy are war and destruction, love and loneliness, promiscuous, desperate, and attention-seeking sexual encounters, desire and loss, truth and fiction.
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Alan Hollinghurst
Alan Hollinghurst FRSL (born 26 May 1954) is a British novelist, and winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty.
Hollinghurst was born on 26 May 1954 in Stroud, Gloucestershire, the only child of James Hollinghurst, a bank manager, and his wife, Elizabeth.[citation needed] He attended Canford School in Dorset.
Hollinghurst read English at Magdalen College, Oxford from 1972 to 1979, graduating with a BA in 1975, and a MLitt in 1979. His thesis was on the works of Ronald Firbank, E. M. Forster and L. P. Hartley, three gay writers. While at Oxford he shared a house with Andrew Motion, and was awarded the Newdigate Prize for poetry in 1974, a year before Motion.
In the late 1970s he became a lecturer at Magdalen College, and then at Somerville College and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. In 1981 he moved on to lecture at University College London, and in 1982 he joined The Times Literary Supplement, where he was the paper's deputy editor from 1985 to 1990.
Hollinghurst is gay. He lives in London.
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Aleksandar Tišma
Aleksandar Tišma (January 16, 1924 in Horgoš, Kanjiža – 16 February 2003 in Novi Sad) was a Serbian novelist.
He completed the basic and middle school in Novi Sad and studied economy and French language and literature in Budapest during World War II, to finally graduate on Germanistics from the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philology. From 1945-1949 he worked as a journalist for Slobodna Vojvodina and Borba, then as an editor and redactor in Matica Srpska up to retirement in 1982.
He was a corresponding member of the Vojvodina Academy of Sciences and Arts since 1979 and regular since 1984, and subsequently regular member of the Serbian Academy upon their fusion 1992. Since 2002, he was also a member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin.
Tišma was occupied with themes of human seeking for freedom, and suffering, violence, horror and guilt they encounter on the way. Along with Czesław Miłosz, Danilo Kiš and György Konrád, he was sometimes classified into the literature of "Mitteleuropa"—dark and contemplative, yet humanistic and thought-provoking.
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Amitava Kumar
Amitava Kumar is an Indian writer and journalist who is currently Professor of English on the Helen D. Lockwood Chair at Vassar College.
Kumar was born in the city of Arrah in the Indian state of Bihar on 17 March 1963. He grew up close to his birthplace in Patna, also in Bihar. There he spent his formative years at St Michael's High School. In India, Kumar earned a bachelor's degree in Political Science from Hindu College, Delhi University in 1984. He holds two master's degrees in Linguistics and Literature from Delhi University (1986) and Syracuse University (1988) respectively. In 1993, he received his doctoral degree from the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota. Currently, he lives with his family in Poughkeepsie, New York.
Kumar is the author of Husband of a Fanatic (The New Press, 2005 and Penguin-India, 2004), Bombay-London-New York (Routledge and Penguin-India, 2002), and Passport Photos (University of California Press and Penguin-India, 2000). He has also written a book of poems, No Tears for the N.R.I. (Writers Workshop, Calcutta, 1996). The novel Home Products was published in early 2007 by Picador-India, and appeared in the US in August 2009 under the title Nobody Does the Right Thing. Early in 2009, Picador-India published his book Evidence of Suspicion; the book was later published by Duke University Press in August 2010 under the title, A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb: A Writer’s Report on the Global War on Terror. In his review of this book, Dwight Garner (critic) at the New York Times called it a "perceptive and soulful – if at times academic – meditation on the global war on terror and its cultural and human repercussions."A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb was also judged the Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year in the Asian American Literary Awards.
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Andrzej Szczypiorski
Andrzej Szczypiorski (help·info) (Polish pronunciation: [ˈandʐeɪ̯ ʂt͡ʂɨˈpʲɔrski]; February 3, 1928 – May 16, 2000) was a Polish novelist and politician.
He was son of Adam Szczypiorski, a political activist, historian and mathematician, and Jadwiga nee Epsztajn. Andrzej has a sister Wiesława (1924-1945).
He spent his childhood in Warsaw.
During World War II he pursued studied in the underground university movement, called the "flying university" due to the regular movement of its location, and was a partisan of the Polish People’s Army. He was a participant of the Warsaw Uprising. After the Warsaw Uprising he was arrested and condemned to be a prisoner of Sachsenhausen concentration camp in which he survived until 1945.
In 1946-1947 he studied political science in the Warsaw Consular Diplomatic Academy.
In 1948-1956, Szczypiorski worked as an editor and in the theater, in the Katowice Silesian Theater. During this period, in 1952, he made his literary debut in the magazine "Życie Literackie" using the pseudonym 'Maurice S. Andrews' and was inducted into the Polish Writers Union.
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Angela Carter
Angela Carter (7 May 1940 – 16 February 1992) was an English novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works. In 2008, The Times ranked Carter tenth in their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Born Angela Olive Stalker in Eastbourne, in 1940, Carter was evacuated as a child to live in Yorkshire with her maternal grandmother. As a teenager she battled anorexia. After attending Streatham & Clapham High School, in south London, she began work as a journalist on the Croydon Advertiser, following in the footsteps of her father. Carter attended the University of Bristol where she studied English literature.
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Anita Brookner
Anita Brookner CBE (born 16 July 1928) is an English language novelist and art historian who was born in Herne Hill, a suburb of London.
Brookner was the only child of Newson Bruckner, a Polish immigrant to Britain, and Maude Schiska, a singer whose father had emigrated from Poland and founded a tobacco factory. Maude changed the family's surname to Brookner because of anti-German sentiment in Britain. Anita Brookner had a lonely childhood, although her grandmother and uncle lived with the family, and her parents, secular Jews, opened their house to Jewish refugees escaping Nazi persecution during the 1930s and World War II.
Brookner was educated at the private James Allen's Girls' School. In 1949 she received a BA in History from King's College London, and in 1953 a doctorate in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art.
In 1967 she became the first woman to hold the Slade professorship at Cambridge University. She was promoted to Reader at the Courtauld Institute of Art in 1977, where she worked until her retirement in 1988.
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Anne Enright
Anne Enright (born 11 October 1962) is an Irish author. A graduate of University of East Anglia's Creative Writing Course, she resides in Bray, County Wicklow, with her husband and children. She has published essays, short stories, a non-fiction book and four novels.
A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, her novel The Gathering won the 2007 Man Booker Prize. She has also won the 1991 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the 2001 Encore Award and the 2008 Irish Novel of the Year.
Before winning the Man Booker Prize, Enright had a low profile in Ireland and the United Kingdom, although her books were favourably reviewed and widely praised. Her writing explores themes such as family relationships, love and sex, Ireland's difficult past and its modern zeitgeist.
Enright won an international scholarship to Lester B. Pearson United World College of the Pacific in Victoria, British Columbia, where she studied for an International Baccalaureate for two years. She received an English and philosophy degree from Trinity College, Dublin. She began writing in earnest when her family gave her an electric typewriter for her 21st birthday. She won a scholarship to the University of East Anglia's Creative Writing Course, where she was taught by Angela Carter and Malcolm Bradbury and earned an M.A.
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Antonio Tabucchi
Antonio Tabucchi (Italian pronunciation: [anˈtɔnjo taˈbukki]; September 24, 1943 – March 25, 2012) was an Italian writer and academic who taught Portuguese language and literature at the University of Siena, Italy.
Deeply in love with Portugal, he was an expert, critic and translator of the works of Fernando Pessoa from whom he drew the conceptions of saudade, of fiction and of the heteronyms. Tabucchi was first introduced to Pessoa's works in the 1960s when attending the Sorbonne. He was so charmed that, back in Italy, he attended a course of Portuguese language for a better comprehension of the poet.
His books and essays have been translated in 18 countries, including Japan. Together with his wife, María José de Lancastre, he translated many works by Pessoa into Italian and has written a book of essays and a comedy about the writer.
Tabucchi has been awarded the French prize "Médicis étranger" for Indian Nocturne (Notturno indiano) and the premio Campiello, and the Aristeion Prize for Sostiene Pereira. In later life he was mentioned as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, a feat he never achieved.
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Aravind Adiga
Aravind Adiga (Kannada: ಅರವಿಂದ ಅಡಿಗ, born 23 October 1974) is an Indian writer and journalist. His debut novel, The White Tiger, won the 2008 Man Booker Prize.
Aravind Adiga was born in Madras (now Chennai) on 23 October 1974 to Dr. K. Madhava Adiga and Usha Adiga, Kannadigas both of whom hailed from Mangalore. His paternal grandfather was the late K. Suryanarayana Adiga, former chairman of Karnataka bank. He grew up in Mangalore and studied at Canara High School, then at St. Aloysius High School, where he completed his SSLC in 1990. He secured first rank in the state in SSLC. Incidentally his elder brother Anand Adiga secured 2 nd rank in SSLC and first rank in PUC in the state. After emigrating to Sydney, Australia, with his family, he studied at James Ruse Agricultural High School. He studied English literature at Columbia College, Columbia University in New York, where he studied with Simon Schama and graduated as salutatorian in 1997. He also studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, where one of his tutors was Hermione Lee.
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Ayman al-Zawahiri
Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri,MB BCh (Arabic: أيمن محمد ربيع الظواهري ʾAyman Muḥammad Rabīʿ aẓ-Ẓawāhirī, born June 19, 1951) is an Egyptian physician,Islamic theologian and current leader of al-Qaeda. He was previously the second and last "emir" of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, having succeeded Abbud al-Zumar in the latter role when Egyptian authorities sentenced al-Zumar to life imprisonment. His wife and three of his six children were killed in an air strike on Afghanistan by US forces in late 2001, following the September 11 attacks on the USA. As of May 2, 2011, he became the leader of al-Qaeda following the death of Osama bin Laden. This was confirmed by a press release from al-Qaeda's general command on June 16. After the 9/11 attacks the U.S. State Department offered a US$25 million reward for information leading to al-Zawahiri's apprehension.
Al-Zawahiri is reportedly a qualified surgeon; when his organization merged with bin Laden's al-Qaeda, he became bin Laden's personal advisor and physician. He had first met bin Laden in Jeddah in 1986. al-Zawahiri has shown a radical understanding of Islamic theology and Islamic history.[citation needed] He speaks Arabic, English and French. He is under worldwide sanctions by the United Nations Security Council 1267 Committee as a member or affiliate of al-Qaeda.
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Barry Unsworth
Barry Unsworth (born 10 August 1930) is a British novelist who writes historical fiction. He has published 17 novels, and has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times, winning once for the 1992 novel Sacred Hunger.
Unsworth was born in Wingate, a mining village in County Durham, England.
He graduated from the University of Manchester in 1951, and lived in France for a year teaching English. He also traveled extensively in Greece and Turkey during the 1960s, lecturing at the University of Athens and the University of Istanbul. His novels about fin-de-siecle Ottoman Empire, The Rage of the Vulture and Pascali's Island, were inspired by these experiences. His second novel, The Greeks Have a Word For It, was an out-growth of his teaching experience in Athens.
In 1999 he was a visiting professor at the University of Iowa's Iowa Writers' Workshop. In 2004 he taught literature and creative writing classes at Kenyon College in Ohio.
He currently lives in Umbria, Italy, with his second wife, a Finnish national. His novel After Hannibal is a fictionalised description of his efforts at settlement in the Italian countryside.
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Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto (Sindhi: بينظير ڀٽو; Urdu: بے نظیر بھٹو, pronounced [beːnəˈziːr ˈbʱʊʈʈoː]; 21 June 1953 – 27 December 2007) was a Pakistani democratic socialist who served as the 11th Prime Minister of Pakistan in two non-consecutive terms from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 until 1996. She was the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a former prime minister of Pakistan and the founder of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), which she led.
In 1982, at age 29, Benazir Bhutto became the chairwoman of PPP — a democratic socialist, centre-left party, making her the first woman in Pakistan to head a major political party. In 1988, she became the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state and was also Pakistan's first (and thus far, only) female prime minister. Noted for her charismatic authority and political astuteness, Benazir Bhutto drove initiatives for Pakistan's economy and national security, and she implemented social capitalist policies for industrial development and growth. In addition, her political philosophy and economic policies emphasized deregulation (particularly of the financial sector), flexible labor markets, the denationalization of state-owned corporations, and the withdrawal of subsidies to others. Benazir Bhutto's popularity waned amid recession, corruption, and high unemployment which later led to the dismissal of her government by conservative President Ghulam Ishaq Khan.
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Bernice Rubens
Bernice Rubens (26 July 1928 – 13 October 2004) was a Booker Prize-winning Welsh novelist.
She was of Russian Jewish descent and born in Cardiff, Wales where she attended Cardiff High School. She came from a very musical family, both her brothers becoming well-known classical musicians. She was married to Rudi Nassauer, a wine merchant and novelist. They had two daughters, Rebecca and Sharon. In the 1960s they owned 10 Compayne Gardens, NW3, where the poet Jon Silkin rented the attic storey and sublet rooms to David Mercer, later a prolific West End and TV playwright, and Malcolm Ross-Macdonald, later an equally prolific writer of historical novels.
Her 1962 novel, Madame Sousatzka, was made into a film in 1988, with Shabana Azmi and Shirley MacLaine.
Her 1975 novel, I Sent a Letter To My Love, was made into a film (Chère inconnue) in 1980 by Moshe Mizraki, starring Simone Signoret and Jean Rochefort.
Her 1985 novel, Mr Wakefield's Crusade, was adapted for television by the BBC in 1992, starring Peter Capaldi and Michael Maloney.
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Bono
Paul David Hewson (born 10 May 1960), most commonly known by his stage name Bono (/ˈbɒnoʊ/ BON-oh), is an Irish singer, musician, and humanitarian best known for being the main vocalist of the Dublin-based rock band U2. Bono was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, and attended Mount Temple Comprehensive School where he met his future wife, Alison Stewart, and the future members of U2. Bono writes almost all U2 lyrics, often using political, social, and religious themes. During their early years, Bono's lyrics contributed to U2's rebellious and spiritual tone. As the band matured, his lyrics became inspired more by personal experiences shared with members of U2.
Outside the band, he has collaborated and recorded with numerous artists, is managing director and a managing partner of Elevation Partners, and has refurbished and owns The Clarence Hotel in Dublin with The Edge. Bono is also widely known for his activism concerning Africa, for which he co-founded DATA, EDUN, the ONE Campaign and Product Red. He has organised and played in several benefit concerts and has met with influential politicians. Bono has been praised and criticised for his activism and involvement with U2. He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, was granted an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, and was named as a Person of the Year by Time, among other awards and nominations.
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British Indian
The term British Indian (also Indian British or Indian Britons) refers to citizens of the United Kingdom whose ancestral roots lie in India. This includes people born in the UK who are of Indian descent, and Indian-born people who have migrated to the UK. Today, Indians number around one and a half million in the UK (not including those of mixed Indian and Other ancestry), making them the single largest visible ethnic minority population in the country. They make up the largest subgroup of British Asians, and are one of the largest Indian communities in the Indian diaspora, largely due to the Indian-British relations (including historical links such as India having been under British occupation and still being part of the Commonwealth of Nations). The British Indian community is the fifth largest in the Indian diaspora, behind the Indian communities in Nepal, the United States, Malaysia and Burma.
British Indians are a well established and middle class ethnic group. A study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in 2007 found British Indians have among the lowest poverty rates among different ethnic groups in Britain second only to White British.
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Cees Nooteboom
Cees Nooteboom (born Cornelis Johannes Jacobus Maria Nooteboom, 31 July 1933, in the Hague) is a Dutch author. He has won numerous literary awards and has been mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature.
Nooteboom was born in The Hague, where his father was killed in a bombing in 1945. After his mother remarried in 1948, and thanks to his strict Catholic stepfather, Nooteboom attended several religious secondary schools, including a Franciscan school in Venray and a school run by the Augustinians in Eindhoven. He finished his secondary education at a nightschool in Utrecht.
After his first job with a bank in Hilversum, Nooteboom traveled throughout Europe. In addition to his writing, he has worked for the political weekly Elsevier from 1957–1960 and at the newspaper de Volkskrant from 1961-1968. In 1967, he became the travel editor for the magazine Avenue.
Nooteboom hired on as a sailor on a freighter to Surinam in 1957 in order to ask for the hand of his first wife, Fanny Lichtveld. They divorced in 1964. Some of his experiences are recounted in the book De verliefde gevangene (1958). He was also in a relationship with the singer, Liesbeth List. Currently he is married to Simone Sassen and divides his time between Amsterdam and the island of Minorca.
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Chinghiz Aitmatov
Chyngyz Aitmatov (Kyrgyz: Чыңгыз Айтматов [tʃɯŋˈʁɯs ɑjtˈmɑtəf]; Russian: Чинги́з Тореку́лович Айтма́тов) (12 December 1928, Sheker, Kirghiz ASSR, USSR - 10 June 2008, Nuremberg, Germany) was a Soviet and Kyrgyz author who wrote in both Russian and Kyrgyz. He is the best known figure in Kyrgyzstan's literature.
He was born to a Kyrgyz father and Tatar mother. Aitmatov's parents were civil servants in Sheker. In 1937 his father was charged with "bourgeois nationalism" in Moscow, arrested and executed in 1938.
Aitmatov lived at a time when Kyrgyzstan was being transformed from one of the most remote lands of the Russian Empire to a republic of the USSR. The future author studied at a Soviet school in Sheker. He also worked from an early age. At fourteen he was an assistant to the Secretary at the Village Soviet. He later held jobs as a tax collector, a loader, an engineer's assistant and continued with many other types of work.
In 1946 he began studying at the Animal Husbandry Division of the Kirghiz Agricultural Institute in Frunze, but later switched to literary studies at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow, where he lived from 1956 to 1958. For the next eight years he worked for Pravda. His first two publications appeared in 1952 in Russian: "The Newspaper Boy Dziuio" and "Ашым." His first work published in Kyrgyz was "Ак Жаан" (White rain, 1954), and his well-known work "Jamilya" (Jamila) appeared in 1958. 1980 saw his first novel The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years; his next significant novel, The Scaffold was published in 1988. The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years and other writings were translated into several languages. In 1994, he was a member of the jury at the 44th Berlin International Film Festival.
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Christa Wolf
Christa Wolf (née Ihlenfeld; 18 March 1929, Landsberg an der Warthe – 1 December 2011, Berlin) was a German literary critic, novelist, and essayist. She was one of the best-known writers to have emerged from the former East Germany.
Wolf was born in Landsberg an der Warthe in the Province of Brandenburg; the city is now Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland. After World War II, Wolf and her family, being Germans, were expelled from their home on what had become Polish territory. They crossed the new Oder-Neisse border in 1945 and settled in Mecklenburg, in what would become the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany. She studied literature at the University of Jena and the University of Leipzig. After her graduation, she worked for the German Writers' Union and became an editor for a publishing company.
She joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in 1949 and left it in June 1989. She was a candidate member of the Central Committee of the SED from 1963 to 1967. Stasi records found in 1993 showed that she worked as an informant (Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter) during the years 1959–61. The Stasi officers criticized what they called her "reticence", and they lost interest in her cooperation. She was herself then closely watched for nearly 30 years. During the Cold War, Wolf was openly critical of the leadership of the GDR, but she maintained a loyalty to the values of socialism and opposed German reunification.
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Christoph Hein
Christoph Hein (born 8 April 1944) is a German author and translator. He grew up in the village Bad Düben near Leipzig. Being a clergyman's son and thus not allowed to attend the Erweiterte Oberschule, he received secondary education at a gymnasium in the western part of Berlin. After his Abitur he jobbed inter alia as assembler, bookseller and assistant director. From 1967 to 1971 Hein studied philosophy in Leipzig and Berlin. Upon graduation he became dramatic adviser at the Volksbühne in Berlin, where he worked a resident writer from 1974. Since 1979 Hein has worked as a freelance writer.
Hein first became known for his 1982 novella Der fremde Freund (The Distant Lover). From 1998 to 2000 Hein was the first president of the pan-German PEN-Centre.
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Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an English American author and journalist whose career spanned more than four decades. Hitchens, often referred to colloquially as "Hitch", was a columnist and literary critic for New Statesman, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Mirror, The Times Literary Supplement and Vanity Fair. He was an author of twelve books and five collections of essays. As a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits, he was a prominent public intellectual, and his confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure.
Hitchens was known for his admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, as well as for his excoriating critiques of various public figures including Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger and Diana, Princess of Wales. Although he supported the Falklands War, his key split from the established political left began in 1989 after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left to the Rushdie Affair. The September 11 attacks strengthened his internationalist embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he called "fascism with an Islamic face." His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, although Hitchens insisted he was not "a conservative of any kind", and his friend Ian McEwan describes him as representing the anti-totalitarian left.
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Claudio Magris
Claudio Magris (b. April 10, 1939, Trieste) is an Italian scholar, translator and writer.
Magris graduated from the University of Turin, where he studied German studies, and has been a professor of modern German literature at the University of Trieste since 1978.
He is an essayist and columnist for the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera and for other European journals and newspapers.
His numerous studies have helped to promote an awareness in Italy of Central European culture and of the literature of the Habsburg myth.
Magris is a member of several European academies and served as senator in the Italian Senate from 1994 to 1996.
His first book on the Habsburg myth in modern Austrian literature rediscovered central European literature. His journalistic writings have been collected in Dietro le parole ("Behind Words", 1978) and Itaca e oltre ("Ithaca and Beyond", 1982). He has written essays on E.T.A. Hoffmann, Henrik Ibsen, Italo Svevo, Robert Musil, Hermann Hesse and Jorge Luis Borges. His novels and theatre productions, many translated into several languages, include Illazioni su una sciabola (1984),Danubio (1986), Stadelmann (1988), Un altro mare (1991), and Microcosmi (1997). His breakthrough was Danubio (1986), which is a magnum opus. In this book (said by the author to be an "drowned novel"), Magris tracks the course of the Danube from its sources to the sea. The whole trip evolves into a colorful, rich canvas of the multicultural European history.
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David Storey
David Rhames Storey (born 13 July 1933 in Wakefield, Yorkshire) is an English playwright, screenwriter, award-winning novelist and a former professional rugby league player.
Educated at QEGS Wakefield and at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, his plays include The Restoration of Arnold Middleton, The Changing Room, Cromwell, Home and Stages.
Storey was a trumpet player who wrote the screenplay for This Sporting Life (1963), directed by Lindsay Anderson, adapted from Storey's first novel of the same name, originally published in 1960, which won the 1960 Macmillan Fiction Award. The film was the beginning of a long professional association with Anderson, whose film version of Storey's play In Celebration was released as part of the American Film Theatre series in 1975. Home and Early Days (both starred Sir Ralph Richardson) were made into television films.
Storey's novels include Flight into Camden, which won the 1963 Somerset Maugham Award; and the 1961 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize; and Saville, which won the 1976 Booker Prize.
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DBC Pierre
DBC Pierre (born Peter Warren Finlay) is a writer known for his novel Vernon God Little. The "DBC" part of his nom-de-plume (normally so written, without punctuation) stands for "Dirty But Clean". "Pierre" was a nickname bestowed on him by childhood friends after the cartoon character "Dirty Pierre" from the television series "Super-6".
He was born in South Australia in 1961, before moving to Mexico, where Pierre was largely raised. Having since lived in Spain, Australia, England and the West Indies, he now resides in the Republic of Ireland.
Pierre was awarded the Booker Prize for fiction on 14 October 2003 for Vernon God Little, his first novel, becoming the third Australian-born author to be so honoured. Upon winning the Whitbread First Novel Award in 2003 he became the first writer ever to receive a Booker and a Whitbread for the same book. The book also won the Bollinger Wodehouse Everyman Prize for comic literature at the Hay Festival in 2003, and earned the author a James Joyce Award from the Literary and Historical Society of University College Dublin.
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Deepa Mehta
Deepa Mehta, LLD (Hindi: दीपा मेहता) (born 1 January 1950 in Amritsar, Punjab, India) is a Genie Award-winning Indian-born Canadian film director and screenwriter, most known for her Elements Trilogy, Fire (1996), Earth (1998), and Water (2005); among which Earth was submitted by the Indian government for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and "Water" was submitted by Canada for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, making it Canada's first non-French Canadian film to receive a nomination in that category. She also co-founded Hamilton-Mehta Productions, with her husband, producer David Hamilton in 1996.
Mehta was born in Amritsar in Punjab, India, though her family moved to New Delhi while she was still a child, and her father worked as a film distributor. Subsequently, Mehta attended Welham Girls High School, a boarding school for girls in Dehradun and graduated from the University of Delhi with a degree in philosophy.
After completing her graduation, Mehta started making short documentaries in India, and in time she met Canadian documentarian Paul Saltzman, who was in India making a film and whom she was to later marry and migrate with to Canada in 1973. Once in Canada, she embarked on her film career as a screenwriter for children's films, she also made a few documentaries including,At 99: A Portrait of Louise Tandy Murch (1975). In 1991 she made her feature-film directorial debut with Sam & Me (starring Om Puri), a story of the relationship between a young Indian boy and an elderly Jewish gentleman in the Toronto neighbourhood of Parkdale. It won Honorable Mention in the Camera d'Or category of the 1991 Cannes Film Festival. Mehta followed up with Camilla starring Bridget Fonda and Jessica Tandy in 1994. In 2002, she directed Bollywood/Hollywood, for which she won the Genie Award for Best Original Screenplay.
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Doris Lessing
Doris May Lessing CH (née Tayler; born 22 October 1919) is a Zimbabwean-British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer. Her novels include The Grass Is Singing, The Golden Notebook, The Good Terrorist, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos.
Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. In doing so the Swedish Academy described her as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny". Lessing was the eleventh woman and the oldest ever person to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
In 2001, Lessing was awarded the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in British Literature. In 2008, The Times ranked her fifth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Lessing was born in Iran, then known as Persia, on 22 October 1919, to Captain Alfred Tayler and Emily Maude Tayler (née McVeagh), who were both English and of British nationality. Her father, who had lost a leg during his service in World War I, met his future wife, a nurse, at the Royal Free Hospital where he was recovering from his amputation. Alfred Tayler and his wife moved to Kermanshah, Iran, in order to take up a job as a clerk for the Imperial Bank of Persia and it was here that Doris was born in 1919. The family then moved to the British colony of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1925 to farm maize, among other plants, when her father purchased around one thousand acres of bush. Lessing's mother attempted to lead an Edwardian lifestyle amidst the rough environment, which would have been easy had the family been wealthy; in reality, such a lifestyle was not feasible. The farm failed to deliver any monetary value in return .
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Dubravka Ugrešić
Dubravka Ugrešić pronounced [dǔbraːʋka ǔɡreʃitɕ] (born 27 March 1949) is a Croatian writer who lives in the Netherlands.
Ugrešić was born in 1949 in Kutina, SR Croatia, SFR Yugoslavia. Her mother is a Bulgarian from Burgas who emigrated to Yugoslavia at age 19, in the wake of World War II. Ugrešić studied Comparative Literature and Russian Language and Literature at the University of Zagreb, pursuing parallel careers as a scholar of the humanities and as a writer, and continued to work there in the Institute for Theory of Research on Literature for twenty years. She later moved to Amsterdam to write. She has spent time teaching at some European and American universities, including UNC Chapel Hill, UCLA, and Harvard. Currently, she lives in Amsterdam where she is a freelance writer and contributor to some European newspapers and literary journals.
Ugrešić has written on a variety of topics from nature to the question of identity and exile. At first she wrote children's books including «Mali Plamen» (1971) and «Filip I screca» (1976). Another of her early works, «Stefica Cvek u raljama zivota» (1981) is included in her postmodern poetic category of writings. «U raljama zivota» was immediately popular and soon adapted into a film for which Ugrešić wrote the screenplay. Her best-known novel in former Yugoslavia was Štefica Cvek u raljama života (Steffie in the Jaws of Life), an ironic postmodernist novel freely playing with clichés and stereotypes of trivial literature and culture. It follows a young typist named Steffie Speck, whose name was taken from a Dear Abby column, as she searches for love, both parodying and being compelled by the kitschy elements of romance. Ugrešić called the novel her "biggest literary achievement... because of the way in which the hero of the novel defeats its author." The novel was an immediate success[citation needed] and made into a 1984 movie U raljama života directed by Rajko Grlić.
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Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco (born Eugen Ionescu, Romanian pronunciation: [e.uˈd͡ʒen i.oˈnesku]; 26 November 1909 – 28 March 1994) was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd. Beyond ridiculing the most banal situations, Ionesco's plays depict in a tangible way the solitude and insignificance of human existence.
Ionesco was born in Slatina, Romania, to a Romanian father of the Orthodox religion and a mother of French and Greek-Romanian heritage, whose religion was Protestant (the religion into which her father was born and to which her originally Greek Orthodox mother had converted). Eugène himself was baptized into the Romanian Orthodox religion. Many sources cite his birthdate as 1912, this error being due to vanity on the part of Ionesco himself.
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F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s. He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender Is the Night, and his most famous, The Great Gatsby. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with despair and age.
Both The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night were made into films, and in 1958 his life from 1937–1940 was dramatized in Beloved Infidel.
Born in 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota to an upper middle class Irish Catholic family, Fitzgerald was named after his famous second cousin, three times removed, Francis Scott Key, but was referred to as "Scott." He was also named after his deceased sister, Louise Scott, one of two sisters who died shortly before his birth. "Well, three months before I was born," he wrote as an adult, "my mother lost her other two children....I think I started then to be a writer.". His parents were Mollie (McQuillan) and Edward Fitzgerald.
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Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka (German pronunciation: [fʁants ˈkafka]; 3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was an influential German-language author of novels and short stories. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century. The term "Kafkaesque" has become part of the English language.
Kafka was born to middle class, German-speaking, Jewish parents, in Prague, Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The house in which he was born, on the Old Town Square next to Prague's Church of St Nicholas, now contains a permanent exhibition devoted to the author.
Most of Kafka's writing, including the large body of his unfinished work, was published posthumously.
Franz Kafka was born into a middle-class Ashkenazi Jewish family in Prague (now the Czech Republic). His father, Hermann Kafka (1852–1931), was described as a "huge, selfish, overbearing businessman" and by Kafka himself as "a true Kafka in strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self-satisfaction, worldly dominance, endurance, presence of mind, [and] knowledge of human nature". Hermann was the fourth child of Jacob Kafka, a shochet or ritual slaughterer, and came to Prague from Osek, a Czech-speaking Jewish village near Písek in southern Bohemia. After working as a traveling sales representative, he established himself as an independent retailer of men's and women's fancy goods and accessories, employing up to 15 people and using a jackdaw (kavka in Czech) as his business logo. Kafka's mother, Julie (1856–1934), was the daughter of Jakob Löwy, a prosperous brewer in Poděbrady, and was better educated than her husband.
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Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Friedrich Dürrenmatt (German pronunciation: [ˈfriːdrɪç ˈdʏrənˌmat] (5 January 1921 – 14 December 1990) was a Swiss author and dramatist. He was a proponent of epic theatre[citation needed] whose plays reflected the recent experiences of World War II. The politically active author's work included avant-garde dramas, philosophically deep crime novels, and often macabre satire. Dürrenmatt was a member of the Gruppe Olten.
Dürrenmatt was born in Konolfingen, in the Emmental (canton of Bern), the son of a Protestant pastor. His grandfather, Ulrich Dürrenmatt, was a conservative politician. The family moved to Bern in 1935. Dürrenmatt began studies in philosophy and German language and literature at the University of Zurich in 1941, but moved to the University of Bern after one semester. In 1943, he decided to become an author and dramatist and dropped his academic career. In 1945–46, he wrote his first play It is Written. On 11 October 1946, he married the actress Lotti Geissler. She died on 16 January 1983, and Dürrenmatt married again in 1984 to another actress, Charlotte Kerr.
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Fulvio Tomizza
Fulvio Tomizza (January 26, 1935 - May 21, 1999) was an Italian language writer. He was born in Giurizzani in Kingdom of Italy (now in Croatia).
In 1955 Tomizza moved to Trieste and his career as a writer took place there. Although he did write a trilogy about his native Istria.
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Gita Sahgal
Gita Sahgal (Kashmiri: गीता सहगल (Devanagari), گیتا سہگل (Nastaleeq)), born 1956/1957 (age 55–56) in Bombay, India, is a writer and journalist on issues of feminism, fundamentalism, and racism, a director of prize-winning documentary films, and a women's rights and human rights activist.
She has been a co-founder and active member of women's organizations. She has also been head of Amnesty International's Gender Unit, and has opposed the oppression of women in particular by religious fundamentalists.
In February 2010 she was suspended by Amnesty as head of its Gender Unit after she was quoted by The Sunday Times in an article about Amnesty, criticizing Amnesty for its high-profile associations with Moazzam Begg, the director of a campaign group called Cageprisoners, whom she referred to as "Britain's most famous supporter of the Taliban". Amnesty responded that she was not suspended "for raising these issues internally." Among those who spoke up in her support was Salman Rushdie, who said Amnesty and Begg "deserve our contempt". Begg said Sahgal's claims of his jihadi connections and support for terrorism were "ridiculous", and that he didn't consider anyone a terrorist who had not been convicted of terrorism.
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Graham Swift
Graham Colin Swift FRSL (born May 4, 1949) is a British author. He was born in London, England and educated at Dulwich College, London, Queens' College, Cambridge, and later the University of York. He was a friend of Ted Hughes
Some of his works have been made into films, including Last Orders, which starred Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins and Waterland which starred Jeremy Irons. Last Orders was a joint winner of the 1996 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction and a mildly controversial winner of the Booker Prize in 1996, owing to the superficial similarities in plot to William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. Waterland was set in The Fens; it is a novel of landscape, history and family, and is often cited as one of the outstanding post-war British novels and has been a set text on the English Literature syllabus in British schools.
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Günter Grass
Günter Wilhelm Grass (born 16 October 1927) is a German-Kashubian novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is widely regarded as Germany's most famous living writer.
Grass was born in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland). In 1945, he came to West Germany as a homeless refugee, though in his fiction he frequently returns to the Danzig of his childhood.
Grass is best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum (1959), a key text in European magic realism, and the first part of his Danzig Trilogy, which also includes Cat and Mouse and Dog Years. His works are frequently considered to have a left-wing political dimension and Grass has been an active supporter of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). The Tin Drum was adapted into a film, which won both the 1979 Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The Swedish Academy, upon awarding him the Nobel Prize in Literature, noted him as a writer "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history".
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Hari Kunzru
Hari Mohan Nath Kunzru (Kashmiri: हरी मोहन नाथ कुंज़रू (Devanagari), ہری موہن ناتھ کنزرو (Nastaleeq)) (born 1969) is a British Indian novelist and journalist of Kashmiri Pandit origin, author of the novels The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolutions and Gods Without Men. His work has been translated into twenty languages.
Kunzru was born in London and grew up in Essex. He was educated at Bancroft's School, Essex. He studied English at Wadham College, Oxford, then gained an MA in Philosophy and Literature from University of Warwick.
From 1995 to 1997 he worked on Wired UK. He has worked as a travel journalist since 1998, writing for such newspapers as The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph, was travel correspondent for Time Out magazine, and worked as a TV presenter interviewing artists for the Sky TV electronic arts programme The Lounge. From 1999–2004 he was also music editor of Wallpaper* magazine and since 1995 he has been a contributing editor to Mute, the culture and technology magazine. His first novel, The Impressionist (2003), had a £1 million-plus advance and was well received critically with excellent sales. His second novel, Transmission, was published in the summer of 2004. In 2005 he published the short story collection Noise. His third novel, My Revolutions, was published in August 2007. His fourth novel, Gods Without Men, was released in August 2011. Set in the American south-west, it is a fractured story about multiple characters across time. It has been compared to David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas.
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Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE (10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a Nobel Prize-winning English playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party (1957), The Homecoming (1964), and Betrayal (1978), each of which he adapted to film. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include The Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1970), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), The Trial (1993), and Sleuth (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television, and film productions of his own and others' works.
Pinter was born and raised in Hackney, east London, and educated at Hackney Downs School. He was a sprinter and a keen cricket player, acting in school plays and writing poetry. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art but did not complete the course. He was fined for refusing National Service as a conscientious objector. Subsequently, he continued training at the Central School of Speech and Drama and worked in repertory theatre in Ireland and England. In 1956 he married actress Vivien Merchant and had a son, Daniel born in 1958. He left Merchant in 1975 and married author Antonia Fraser in 1980.
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Hassan Nasrallah
Hasan Nasrallah (born August 31, 1960; Arabic: حسن نصرالله) became the third Secretary General of the Lebanese political and paramilitary organization Hezbollah after Israel assassinated the previous leader, Abbas al-Musawi, in 1992. Hezbollah is regarded as a legitimate resistance movement and political party throughout much of the Arab and Muslim worlds, but is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, the Netherlands, Israel, and Canada. The group's military wing by itself is designated a proscribed terrorist group by the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia.
Hasan Nasrallah was born the ninth of ten children in Bourj Hammoud, Matn District (an eastern suburb of Beirut) on August 31, 1960 . His father, Abdul Karim, was born in Bazouriyeh, a village in Jabal Amel (South Republic of Lebanon) located near Tyre to Iranian grandparents. Although his family was not particularly religious, Hasan was interested in theological studies. He attended an-Najah school and later a public school in Sin el Fil (Christian area) Beirut.
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Helen Hunt
Helen Elizabeth Hunt (born June 15, 1963) is an American actress, film director, and screenwriter. She starred in the sitcom, Mad About You, for seven years before being cast in the 1997 romantic comedy film, As Good as It Gets for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. Some of her other Hollywood credits include Twister, Cast Away, What Women Want, Pay It Forward, and Soul Surfer. She made her directorial debut in 2007 with Then She Found Me.
Hunt was born in Culver City, California. Her mother, Jane Elizabeth (née Novis), worked as a photographer; and her father, Gordon E. Hunt, is a film director and acting coach. Her uncle, Peter H. Hunt, also is a director. Her paternal grandmother was from a German Jewish family, and her maternal grandfather was born in England. Her Iowa-born maternal grandmother, Dorothy Fries (née Anderson), was a voice coach. When she was three, Hunt's family moved to New York City, where her father directed theatre (Hunt attended plays as a child several times a week). Hunt studied ballet, and attended UCLA.
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Hilary Mantel
Hilary Mary Mantel CBE (/mænˈtɛl/ man-TEL; born 6 July 1952), née Thompson, is an English novelist, short story writer and critic. Her work, ranging in subject from personal memoir to historical fiction, has been short-listed for major literary awards. In 2009, she won the Man Booker Prize for her novel Wolf Hall.
She was born in Glossop, Derbyshire, the eldest of three children, and was brought up in the Derbyshire mill village of Hadfield, attending the local Roman Catholic primary school. Her parents, Margaret and Henry Thompson, were both born in England, of Irish descent. Her parents separated and she did not see her father after age eleven. Jack Mantel moved in and became her unofficial stepfather and she took his surname. Her family background, the mainspring of much of her fiction, is explained in her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost. She lost her religious faith at age 12 and says that this left a permanent mark on her: the "real cliche, the sense of guilt. You grow up believing that you're wrong and bad. And for me, because I took what I was told really seriously, it bred a very intense habit of introspection and self-examination and a terrible severity with myself. So that nothing was ever good enough. It's like installing a policeman, and one moreover who keeps changing the law."
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Hitoshi Igarashi
Hitoshi Igarashi (五十嵐 一, Igarashi Hitoshi?, 1947—July 11, 1991) was a Japanese scholar of Arabic and Persian literature and history and the Japanese translator of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses. He completed his doctoral programme in Islamic art at the University of Tokyo in 1976, and was research fellow at the Royal Academy of Iran until the Islamic Revolution in 1979. After Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the death of "the author of the Satanic Verses book, which is against Islam, the Prophet and the Qur'an, and all those involved in its publication who are aware of its content", he was stabbed to death repeatedly in the face and arms by an unknown assailant on July 11, 1991 in his office at the University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, where he was an associate professor.
The assailant is suspected of being an Iranian Shiite Muslim who was carrying out the fatwa.
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Howard Jacobson
Howard Jacobson (born 25 August 1942) is a Man Booker Prize-winning British Jewish author and journalist. He is best known for writing comic novels that often revolve around the dilemmas of British Jewish characters.
Howard Jacobson was born in Manchester, raised in Prestwich and was educated at Stand Grammar School in Whitefield, before going on to study English at Downing College, Cambridge under F. R. Leavis. He lectured for three years at the University of Sydney before returning to England to teach at Selwyn College, Cambridge. His later teaching posts included a period at Wolverhampton Polytechnic from 1974 to 1980.
Although Jacobson has described himself as "a Jewish Jane Austen" (in response to being described as "the English Phillip Roth"), he also states, "I'm not by any means conventionally Jewish. I don't go to shul. What I feel is that I have a Jewish mind, I have a Jewish intelligence. I feel linked to previous Jewish minds of the past. I don't know what kind of trouble this gets somebody into, a disputatious mind. What a Jew is has been made by the experience of 5,000 years, that's what shapes the Jewish sense of humour, that's what shaped Jewish pugnacity or tenaciousness." He maintains that "comedy is a very important part of what I do."
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Ian McEwan
Ian Russell McEwanCBE, FRSA, FRSL (born 21 June 1948) is a British novelist and screenwriter, and one of Britain's most highly regarded writers. In 2008, The Times named him among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
McEwan began his career writing sparse, Gothic short stories. The Cement Garden (1978) and The Comfort of Strangers (1981) were his first two novels, and earned him the nickname "Ian Macabre". These were followed by three novels of some success in the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1997, he published Enduring Love, which was made into a film. He won the Man Booker Prize with Amsterdam (1998). In 2001, he published Atonement, which was made into an Oscar-winning film. This was followed by Saturday (2005), On Chesil Beach (2007) and Solar (2010). In 2011, he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize.
McEwan was born in Aldershot, Hampshire, on 21 June 1948, the son of David McEwan and Rose Lilian Violet (née Moore). He spent much of his childhood in East Asia (including Singapore), Germany and North Africa (including Libya), where his father, a Scottish army officer, was posted. His family returned to England when he was twelve. He was educated at Woolverstone Hall School; the University of Sussex, receiving his degree in English literature in 1970; and the University of East Anglia, where he was one of the first graduates of Malcolm Bradbury's pioneering creative writing course.
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Indian people
Indian people or Indians are people who are citizens of India, which forms a major part of south of Asia, containing 17.31% of the world's population. The Indian nationality is in essence made up of regional ethno-linguistic groups, reflecting the rich and complex history of India. India, in its current boundaries, was formed out of a number of predecessors.
Substantial populations with Indian ancestry, as a result of emigration, exist in many different parts of the world, most notably in Southeast Asia, South Africa, Australia, England, Middle East and North America. Population estimates vary from a conservative 12 million to 20 million diaspora.
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Inger Christensen
Inger Christensen (16 January 1935 – 2 January 2009) was a Danish poet, novelist, essayist and editor considered the foremost Danish poetic experimentalist of her generation.
Born in the town of Vejle, on the eastern, Jutland coast of Denmark, Christensen's father was a tailor, her mother a cook before her marriage. After graduating from Vejle Gymnasium, she moved to Copenhagen and, later, to Århus, studying at the Teachers’ College there. She received her certificate in 1958. During this same period, Christensen began publishing poems in the journal Hvedekorn, and was guided by the noted Danish poet and critic Poul Borum (1934–1995), whom she married in 1959 and divorced in 1976.
After teaching at the College for Arts in Holbæk from 1963 to 1964, she turned to writing full time, producing two of her major early collections, Lys (Light, 1962) and Græs (Grass, 1963), both examining the limits of self-knowledge and the role of language in perception. Her most acclaimed work of the 1960s, however, was It (det), which, on one level, explored social, political and aesthetic issues, but more deeply probed large philosophical questions of meaning. The work, almost incantatory in tone, opposes issues such as fear and love and power and powerlessness.
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Iris Murdoch
Dame Iris Murdoch DBE (15 July 1919 – 8 February 1999) was an Irish-born British author and philosopher, best known for her novels about political and social questions of good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her first published novel, Under the Net, was selected in 2001 by the editorial board as one of Modern Library's 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 1987, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. In 2008, The Times named Murdoch among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Jean Iris Murdoch was born in Phibsborough, Dublin, Ireland, on 15 July 1919. Her father, Wills John Hughes Murdoch, came from a mainly Presbyterian sheep farming family from Hillhall, County Down, and her mother, Irene Alice Richardson, who had trained as a singer until Iris was born, was from a middle class, Church of Ireland (Anglican) family from Dublin. When Iris was very young, her parents moved to London, where her father worked in the Civil Service.
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Irrfan Khan
Sahabzade Irrfan Ali Khan, previously known as Irrfan Khan and now just Irrfan (Hindi: इरफ़ान ख़ान; born on 7th January 1967 ), is an Indian actor in film, television and theatre. He received recognition for his roles in The Warrior (2001), Maqbool (2003), Haasil (2004), The Namesake (2006), A Mighty Heart (2007), Life in a... Metro (2007), Slumdog Millionaire (2008), Billu (2009), New York (2009), New York, I Love You (2009), Paan Singh Tomar (film) (2012), and Vodafone commercials.
He has won two Filmfare Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and an Independent Spirit Award nomination. He is also the recipient of 2011 Padma Shri award, the fourth highest civilian award in India. He has also been cast in The Amazing Spider-Man as Dr. Ratha. He has appeared in more than 30 films in the Bollywood.
Khan was born in Jaipur to a Muslim family. Khan's mother, Sayeeda Begum, was from the Tonk Hakim family, and his father, the late Jagirdar, was from the Khajuriya village near the Tonk district, and ran a tyre business. Khan was studying for his M.A. degree when he earned a scholarship to study at National School of Drama (NSD) in New Delhi in 1984.
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Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino (15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) (Italian pronunciation: [ˈiːtalo kalˈviːno]) was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952–1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979).
Lionised in Britain and the United States, he was the most-translated contemporary Italian writer at the time of his death, and a noted contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Italo Calvino was born in Santiago de Las Vegas, a suburb of Havana, Cuba in 1923. His father, Mario, was a tropical agronomist and botanist who also taught agriculture and floriculture. Born 47 years earlier in San Remo, Italy, Mario Calvino had emigrated to Mexico in 1909 where he took up an important position with the Ministry of Agriculture. In an autobiographical essay, Italo Calvino explained that his father "had been in his youth an anarchist, a follower of Kropotkin and then a Socialist Reformist". In 1917, Mario left for Cuba to conduct scientific experiments, after living through the Mexican Revolution.
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J. Edgar Hoover
John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972 aged 77. Hoover is credited with building the FBI into a large and efficient crime-fighting agency, and with instituting a number of modernizations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories.
Late in life and after his death Hoover became a controversial figure as evidence of his secretive actions became public. His critics have accused him of exceeding the jurisdiction of the FBI. He used the FBI to harass political dissenters and activists, to amass secret files on political leaders, and to collect evidence using illegal methods. FBI directors are now limited to one 10-year term, subject to extension by the United States Senate, because of his long and controversial tenure.
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J. M. Coetzee
John Maxwell "J. M." Coetzee (/kʊtˈsiːə/ kuut-SEE-ə; born 9 February 1940) is a novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. Of South African origin, he is now an Australian citizen and lives in Adelaide, South Australia. Prior to receiving the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature, Coetzee twice won the Booker Prize.
Coetzee was born in Cape Town, Cape Province, Union of South Africa, on 9 February 1940 to parents of Afrikaner descent. His father was an occasional lawyer, government employee and sheep farmer, and his mother a schoolteacher. The family spoke English at home, but Coetzee spoke Afrikaans with other relatives. Coetzee is descended from early Dutch immigrants dating to the 17th century, and also has Polish ancestry from his maternal great-grandfather, Baltazar Dubiel.
Coetzee spent most of his early life in Cape Town and in Worcester in Cape Province (modern-day Western Cape) as recounted in his fictionalized memoir, Boyhood (1997). The family moved to Worcester when Coetzee was eight after his father lost his government job due to disagreements over the state's apartheid policy. Coetzee attended St. Joseph's College, a Catholic school in the Cape Town suburb of Rondebosch, and later studied mathematics and English at the University of Cape Town, receiving his Bachelor of Arts with Honours in English in 1960 and his Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Mathematics in 1961.
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Jack Straw
John Whitaker "Jack" Straw (born 3 August 1946) is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Blackburn since 1979. He served as Home Secretary from 1997 to 2001, Foreign Secretary from 2001 to 2006 and Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons from 2006 to 2007 under Tony Blair. From 2007 to 2010 he was the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain and the Secretary of State for Justice, appointed as part of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's first Cabinet. Straw is one of only three people to have served in Cabinet continuously from 1997 to 2010 (the others being Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling).
When the Labour Party lost power in May 2010, he briefly became the Shadow Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and the Shadow Deputy Prime Minister, but stood down from the frontbench after the Labour Party elected a new Shadow Cabinet.
Straw was born in Buckhurst Hill, Essex, England. One of his maternal great-grandparents was a Jewish German immigrant. Straw was brought up at Loughton, Essex by his mother, Joan Sylvia Gilbey on a council estate after his father Walter Arthur Whitaker Straw, an insurance salesman, left the family and condemned them to poverty. Walter Straw had been sent to prison in 1939 for being a conscientious objector.
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James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in an array of contrasting literary styles, perhaps most prominently the stream of consciousness technique he perfected. Other major works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His complete oeuvre includes three books of poetry, a play, occasional journalism, and his published letters.
Joyce was born to a middle class family in Dublin, where he excelled as a student at the Jesuit schools Clongowes and Belvedere, then at University College Dublin. In his early twenties he emigrated permanently to continental Europe, living in Trieste, Paris and Zurich. Though most of his adult life was spent abroad, Joyce's fictional universe does not extend beyond Dublin, and is populated largely by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies and friends from his time there; Ulysses in particular is set with precision in the streets and alleyways of the city. Shortly after the publication of Ulysses he elucidated this preoccupation somewhat, saying, "For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal."
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Jeet Thayil
Jeet Thayil (born 1959 in Kerala) is an Indian poet, novelist, librettist and musician. He is best known as a poet and is the author of four collections: These Errors Are Correct (Tranquebar, 2008), English (2004, Penguin India, Rattapallax Press, New York, 2004), Apocalypso (Ark, 1997) and Gemini (Viking Penguin, 1992).
Thayil is the son of the writer and editor, Padma Bhushan TJS George, who at various times in his life was posted in several places in India, in Hong Kong and New York. Thayil was mostly educated abroad. He received a Masters in Fine Arts from Sarah Lawrence College (New York), and is the recipient of grants and awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Swiss Arts Council, the British Council and the Rockefeller Foundation.
His first novel, Narcopolis (Faber, 2011) is set mostly in Bombay in the 70s and 80s, and sets out to tell the city's secret history, when opium gave way to new cheap heroin. Thayil has said he wrote the novel, “to create a kind of memorial, to inscribe certain names in stone. As one of the characters [in Narcopolis] says, it is only by repeating the names of the dead that we honour them. I wanted to honour the people I knew in the opium dens, the marginalised, the addicted and deranged, people who are routinely called the lowest of the low; and I wanted to make some record of a world that no longer exists, except within the pages of a book.”
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John Banville
William John Banville (born 8 December 1945), who writes as John Banville who sometimes writes as Benjamin Black, is an Irish novelist, adapter of dramas, and screenwriter. He is recognised for his precise, cold, forensic prose style, Nabokovian inventiveness, and for the dark humour of his generally arch narrators. His stated ambition is to give his prose "the kind of denseness and thickness that poetry has".
Banville's career has seen him presented with numerous awards. His novel The Book of Evidence was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Guinness Peat Aviation award in 1989. His eighteenth novel, The Sea, won the Booker Prize in 2005. He was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize in 2011 and is a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
William John Banville was born to Agnes (née Doran) and Martin Banville, a garage clerk, in Wexford, Ireland. He is the youngest of three siblings; his older brother Vincent is also a novelist and has written under the name Vincent Lawrence as well as his own. His sister Anne Veronica "Vonnie" Banville-Evans has written both a children's novel and a reminiscence of growing up in Wexford.
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John Berger
John Peter Berger (born 5 November 1926) is an English art critic, novelist, painter, poet and author. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a university text.
Born in Hackney,London, England, Berger was educated at St Edward's School, an independent school for boys in Oxford. His father, S.J.D. Berger, O.B.E., M.C., had been an infantry officer on the western front during the First World War. Berger served in the British Army from 1944 to 1946; he then enrolled in the Chelsea School of Art and the Central School of Art in London.
Berger began his career as a painter and exhibited work at a number of London galleries in the late 1940s. His art has been exhibited at the Wildenstein, Redfern and Leicester galleries in London. Berger has continued to paint throughout his career.
While teaching drawing (from 1948 to 1955), Berger became an art critic, publishing many essays and reviews in the New Statesman. His Marxist humanism and his strongly stated opinions on modern art made him a controversial figure early in his career. He titled an early collection of essays Permanent Red, in part as a statement of political commitment, and later wrote that before the Soviet Union achieved nuclear parity with the United States he had felt constrained not to criticize the former's policies; afterwards his attitude toward the Soviet state became considerably more critical.
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John Rambo
John Rambo (born July 6, 1947) is an iconic fictional character and the basis of the Rambo saga. He first appeared in the 1972 novel First Blood by David Morrell, but later became more famous in the film series, played by Sylvester Stallone. The character John Rambo was considered a possible candidate for the American Film Institute's list 100 Years…100 Heroes and Villains.
John Rambo (John J. Rambo according to the first film), was born on July 6, 1947 in Bowie, Arizona, to a Native American (Navajo) father (R. Rambo according to the last film) and an Italian American mother (Marie Drago).[citation needed] However, in Rambo: First Blood Part II, Marshall Murdock states that Rambo is of American Indian/German descent. Rambo enlisted in the United States Army at the age of 17 on August 6, 1964. After graduating from Rangeford High School in 1965, his military service began in January 1966. Rambo was deployed to South Vietnam in September 1966. He returned to the U.S. in 1967 and began training in the Special Forces (Green Berets) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. In late 1969, Rambo was re-deployed to Vietnam. In November 1971, he was captured by North Vietnamese forces near the Chinese-Vietnamese border and held at a POW camp, where he and other American POWs were repeatedly tortured. Rambo escaped captivity in May 1972, but was then re-deployed. At some point in his military career he also apparently received training in flying helicopters. Rambo received his military discharge on September 17, 1974.
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Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986), known as Jorge Luis Borges (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈxorxe ˈlwis ˈβorxes]), was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. His work embraces the "character of unreality in all literature". His most famous books, Ficciones (1944) and The Aleph (1949), are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes such as dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, animals, fictional writers, religion and God. His works have contributed to the genre of science fiction as well as the genre of magic realism, a genre that reacted against the realism/naturalism of the nineteenth century. In fact, critic Angel Flores, the first to use the term, set the beginning of this movement with Borges's Historia universal de la infamia (A Universal History of Infamy) (1935). Scholars have also suggested that Borges's progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil.
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Julian Barnes
Julian Patrick Barnes (born 19 January 1946) is a contemporary English writer. Winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize, for his book The Sense of an Ending, three of his earlier books had been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: Flaubert's Parrot (1984), England, England (1998), and Arthur & George (2005). He has also written crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh (his late wife's surname).
Barnes is one of the best-loved English writers in France, where he has won several literary prizes, including the Prix Médicis for Flaubert's Parrot and the Prix Femina for Talking It Over. He is an officer of L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Barnes was born in Leicester although his family moved to the outer suburbs of London six weeks afterwards. Both of his parents were teachers of French. He has said that his support for Leicester City Football Club was, aged four or five, "a sentimental way of hanging on" to his home city. He was educated at the City of London School from 1957 to 1964. At the age of 10, Barnes was told by his mother that he had "too much imagination". As an adolescent he lived in Northwood, Middlesex, the 'Metroland' of which he named his first novel. He then went on to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied Modern Languages. After graduation, he worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary supplement for three years. He then worked as a reviewer and literary editor for the New Statesman and the New Review. During his time at the New Statesman, Barnes suffered from debilitating shyness, saying: "When there were weekly meetings I would be paralysed into silence, and was thought of as the mute member of staff". From 1979 to 1986 he worked as a television critic, first for the New Statesman and then for The Observer.
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Kashmiri people
The Kashmiri people (Kashmiri: کٲشُر) are a Dardic linguistic group living in or originating from the former Indian state of Kashmir. That former state is presently disputed territory, comprising the Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir, the Pakistani-administered territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit–Baltistan, and the People's Republic of China-administered regions of Aksai Chin and Trans-Karakoram Tract.
According to language research conducted by the International Institute of UCLA, the Kashmiri language is "a Northwestern Dardic language of the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-Iranian subfamily of the Indo-European language family." There is, however, no universally agreed genetic basis for the language. UCLA estimates the number of speakers as being around 4.4 million, with a preponderance in the Kashmir Valley, whereas the 2001 census of India recorded 5,362,349 throughout India, and thus excluding speakers in the non-Indian Kashmiri areas.
Horace Hayman Wilson, who died in 1860, noted that the recorded history of Kashmir commences with the Kurukshetra War, which is believed to date variously from 6000BCE to 500BCE.
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Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro OBE (Japanese: カズオ・イシグロ (Kazuo Ishiguro) or 石黒 一雄 (Ishiguro Kazuo); born 8 November 1954) is a Japanese-born British novelist. He was born in Nagasaki, Japan, and his family moved to England in 1960. Ishiguro obtained his Bachelor's degree from University of Kent in 1978 and his Master's from the University of East Anglia's creative writing course in 1980. He became a British citizen in 1982.
Ishiguro is one of the most celebrated contemporary fiction authors in the English-speaking world, having received four Man Booker Prize nominations, and winning the 1989 prize for his novel The Remains of the Day. In 2008, The Times ranked Ishiguro 32nd on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Recently, his novel Never Let Me Go has been adapted to film.
Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki on 8 November 1954, the son of Shizuo Ishiguro, a physical oceanographer, and his wife Shizuko. In 1960 his family, including his two sisters, moved to Guildford, Surrey so that his father could begin research at the National Institute of Oceanography. He attended Stoughton Primary School and then Woking County Grammar School in Surrey. After finishing school he took a 'gap year' and travelled through America and Canada, whilst writing a journal and sending demo tapes to record companies.
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Keri Hulme
Keri Hulme (born 9 March 1947) is a New Zealand writer. Her only novel, The Bone People, won the Booker Prize in 1985.
Hulme was born in Christchurch, in New Zealand's South Island. The daughter of a carpenter and a credit manager, she was the eldest of six children. Her parents were of English, Scottish, and Māori (Ngāi Tahu) descent. "Our family comes from diverse people: Kai Tahu, Kāti Mamoe (South Island Maori iwi); Orkney islanders; Lancashire folk; Faroese and/or Norwegian migrants," Hulme told Contemporary Women Poets Her early education was at North New Brighton Primary School and Aranui High School. Her father died when she was 11 years old.
Hulme worked as a tobacco picker in Motueka after leaving school. She began studying for an honours law degree at the University of Canterbury in 1967, but left after four terms and returned to tobacco picking.
By 1972, she decided to begin writing full-time, but, despite family support, was forced to go back to work nine months later. She continued writing, some of her work appearing under the pseudonym Kai Tainui. During this time, she continued working on her novel, The Bone People, ultimately published in February 1984. The novel was returned by several publishers before being accepted by the Spiral Collective. It won the 1984 New Zealand Book Award for Fiction and the Booker Prize in 1985. Hulme was the first (and as of 2012, only) New Zealander to win the Booker.
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Kingsley Amis
Sir Kingsley William Amis, CBE (16 April 1922 – 22 October 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism. According to his biographer, Zachary Leader, Amis was "the finest English comic novelist of the second half of the twentieth century." He was the father of English novelist Martin Amis.
In 2008, The Times ranked Kingsley Amis ninth on their list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.
Kingsley Amis was born in Clapham, south London, the son of William Robert Amis, a mustard manufacturer's clerk. He was educated at the City of London School, and in April 1941 was admitted to St. John's College, Oxford, where he read English. It was there that he met Philip Larkin, with whom he formed the most important friendship of his life. While at Oxford, in June 1941, Amis joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. After only a year, in July 1942, he was called up for national service. After serving in the Royal Corps of Signals in the Second World War, Amis returned to Oxford in October 1945 to complete his degree. Although he worked hard and earned a 1947 first in English, he had by then decided to give much of his time to writing.
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Kiran Desai
Kiran Desai (born 3 September 1971) is an Indian author. She is a citizen of India and a permanent resident of the United States. Her novel The Inheritance of Loss won the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award.
Desai is the daughter of the Anita Desai, herself short-listed for the Booker Prize on three occasions. She was born in New Delhi, India, and lived there until she was 10. She left India at 14, and she and her mother then lived in England for a year, and then moved to the United States, where she studied creative writing at Bennington College, Hollins University, and Columbia University.
Her first novel, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, was published in 1998 and received accolades from such notable figures as Salman Rushdie. It won the Betty Trask Award, a prize given by the Society of Authors for the best new novels by citizens of the Commonwealth of Nations under the age of 35.
Her second book, The Inheritance of Loss, (2006) was widely praised by critics throughout Asia, Europe and the United States. It won the 2006 Man Booker Prize, as well as the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award.[citation needed]
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Larry Mullen, Jr.
Lawrence Joseph "Larry" Mullen, Jr. (born 31 October 1961) is an Irish musician best known as the drummer for the Irish rock band U2. He is the founder of U2, which he later described as "'The Larry Mullen Band' for about ten minutes, then Bono walked in and blew any chance I had of being in charge." He has worked on numerous side projects during his career, including a collaboration with Michael Stipe and Mike Mills of R.E.M. to form Automatic Baby in 1993 and working with bandmate Adam Clayton on the re-recording of the theme to Mission: Impossible, in 1996. He and U2 have won many awards, including 22 Grammy awards.
Mullen, the middle child and only son of Larry and Maureen Mullen, was born 31 October 1961 in Artane, Dublin, Ireland. Mullen began drumming in 1970, at the age of 9, under the instruction of Irish drummer Joe Bonnie and, later, Bonnie's daughter Monica. His mother died in a car accident in November 1978, two years after U2 was founded.
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Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson ( /ˈtʃɑrlz ˈlʌtwɪdʒ ˈdɒdʒsən/ CHARLZ LUDT-wij DOJ-sən; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll (/ˈkærəl/ KARR-əl), was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky", all examples of the genre of literary nonsense. He is noted for his facility at word play, logic, and fantasy, and there are societies dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works and the investigation of his life in many parts of the world, including the United Kingdom, Japan, the United States, and New Zealand.
Dodgson's family was predominantly northern English, with Irish connections. Conservative and High Church Anglican, most of Dodgson's ancestors were army officers or Church of England clergy. His great-grandfather, also named Charles Dodgson, had risen through the ranks of the church to become the Bishop of Elphin. His grandfather, another Charles, had been an army captain, killed in action in Ireland in 1803 when his two sons were hardly more than babies. His mother's name was Frances Jane Lutwidge.
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Mahound
Mahound or Mahoun is a variant form of the name Muhammad, often found in Medieval and later European literature. This version of the name, or variants of it, came to be strongly associated with anti-Muslim attitudes in Western Christendom. It was especially connected to the Christian belief that Muhammad was a god worshipped by Pagans, or that he was a demon who inspired a false religion.
The perception that Muslims worshipped Muhammad was common in Medieval Europe. According to Bernard Lewis, the "development of the concept of Mahound started with considering Muhammad as a kind of demon or false god worshipped with Apollyon and Termangant in an unholy trinity [in the song of Roland]. Finally after reformation, Muhammad was conceived as a cunning and self-seeking imposter.".
A similar belief was the claim that the Knights Templar worshipped a god called Baphomet, also widely interpreted as a variant of the name "Mahommet".
The name appears in various medieval mystery plays, in which Mahound is sometimes portrayed as a generic "pagan" god worshipped by villains such as Herod and the Pharaoh of the Exodus. One play depicts both Herod the Great and his son Herod Antipas as worshipping Mahound, while in another play Pharaoh encourages the Egyptians to pursue the Israelites into the Red Sea with the words: Heave up you hearts ay to Mahound.
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Margaret Atwood
Margaret Eleanor Atwood, CC OOnt FRSC (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honored authors of fiction in recent history. She is a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and Prince of Asturias award for Literature, has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, winning once, and has been a finalist for the Governor General's Award seven times, winning twice. Atwood has increasingly been mentioned as a potential candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature.
While she is best known for her work as a novelist, she is also a poet, having published 15 books of poetry to date. Many of her poems have been inspired by myths and fairy tales, which have been interests of hers from an early age. Atwood has published short stories in Tamarack Review, Alphabet, Harper's, CBC Anthology, Ms., Saturday Night, and many other magazines. She has also published four collections of stories and three collections of unclassifiable short prose works.
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Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Donnadieu, known as Marguerite Duras (pronounced: [maʁ.ɡə.ʁit dy.ʁas]) (4 April 1914 – 3 March 1996) was a French writer and film director.
She was born in Gia-Dinh (a former name for Saigon), French Indochina (now Vietnam), after her parents responded to a campaign by the French government encouraging people to work in the colony.
Marguerite's father fell ill soon after their arrival, and returned to France, where he died. After his death, her mother, a teacher, remained in Indochina with her ten children. The family lived in relative poverty after her mother made a bad investment in an isolated property and area of farmland in Cambodia. The difficult life that the family experienced during this period was highly influential on Marguerite's later work. An affair between the teenaged Marguerite and a Chinese man was to be treated several times (described in quite contrasting ways) in her subsequent memoirs and fiction. She also reported being beaten by both her mother and her older brother during this period.
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Marianne Wiggins
Marianne Wiggins (born September 8, 1947) is an American author. She is noted for the unusual characters and storylines in her novels. She has won the Whiting Writers' Award, an NEA award and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize.
Wiggins was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Her family was of Greek and Scots ancestry. Her father, a farmer, preached in a conservative Christian church founded by her grandfather. She married at 17, just after graduating from Manheim Township High School and promptly gave birth to a daughter, Lara, whom she raised in Martha’s Vineyard. Lara is now a professional photographer in Los Angeles.
Wiggins lived in London for 16 years and for brief stints in Paris, Brussels and Rome.
She and Salman Rushdie wed in January 1988. On a book tour in the US, the couple learned on February 14, 1989 that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had ordered Rushdie killed for blasphemy in the book The Satanic Verses. As a result, Wiggins went into protective hiding in Great Britain, along with Rushdie. In 1993, the two divorced.
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Michael Ondaatje
Philip Michael Ondaatje ( /ɒnˈdɑːtʃiː/; born September 12, 1943), OC, is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian novelist. He won the Booker Prize for his novel The English Patient, which was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film.
Ondaatje was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in 1943 and moved to England in 1954. He attended Dulwich College. After relocating to Canada in 1962, Ondaatje became a Canadian citizen. He studied for a time at Bishop's College School and Bishop's University in Lennoxville, Quebec, but moved to Toronto, where he received his BA from the University of Toronto and his MA from Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. He then began teaching at the University of Western Ontario in London. In 1970, he settled in Toronto and, from 1971 to 1990, taught English literature at York University and Glendon College.
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Mikhail Bulgakov
Mikhaíl Afanasyevich Bulgakov (Russian: Михаи́л Афана́сьевич Булга́ков, pronounced [mʲɪxɐˈil ɐfɐˈnasʲjɪvʲɪtɕ bʊlˈgakəf]; May 15 [O.S. May 3] 1891, Kiev – March 10, 1940, Moscow) was a Soviet Russian writer and playwright active in the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his novel The Master and Margarita, which The Times of London has called one of the masterpieces of the 20th century.
Mikhail Bulgakov was born on May 15, 1891 in Kiev, at that time in the Russian Empire. He was one of seven children (the oldest of three brothers) of Afanasiy Bulgakov, an assistant professor at the Kiev Theological Academy, and Varvara Mikhailovna, a former teacher. Both of his grandfathers were clergymen in the Russian Orthodox Church. Friendship, respect, and mutual love reigned in Bulgakov's large family and happy home. From childhood Bulgakov was drawn to theater. At home, he wrote comedies, which his brothers and sisters acted out.
In 1901 Bulgakov joined the First Kiev Gymnasium, where he developed an interest in Russian and European literature (his favourite authors at the time being Gogol, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Saltykov-Shchedrin, and Dickens), theatre and opera. The teachers of the Gymnasium exerted a great influence on the formation of his literary taste. After the death of his father in 1907, Mikhail's mother, a well-educated and extraordinary diligent person, assumed responsibility for his education. After graduation from the Gymnasium in 1909, Bulgakov entered the Medical Faculty of St. Vladimir University, which he finished with special commendation to become a physician at the Kiev Military Hospital.
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Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera (Czech pronunciation: [ˈmɪlan ˈkundɛra]); born 1 April 1929) is the Czech Republic's most recognised living writer. Of Czech origin, he has lived in exile in France since 1975, having become a naturalised citizen in 1981. Having written in both Czech and French, he revises the French translations of all his books; these therefore are not considered translations but original works.
Kundera is best known as the author of works such as The Joke, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. His books were banned by the Communist regimes of Czechoslovakia until the downfall of the regime in the Velvet Revolution of 1989. He lives virtually incognito and rarely speaks to the media. A perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he has been nominated on several occasions.
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Moazzam Begg
Moazzam Begg (Urdu: مواظم بیگ) (born in 1968 in Sparkhill, Birmingham, England), is a British Pakistani Muslim who was held in extrajudicial detention in the Bagram Theater Internment Facility and the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp, in Cuba, by the U.S. government for nearly three years.
The Pentagon claimed Begg was an enemy combatant and al-Qaeda member, recruited others for al-Qaeda, provided money and support to al-Qaeda training camps, received extensive military training in al-Qaeda-run terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, and prepared to fight U.S. or allied troops. While Begg admits spending time at two Islamic militant training camps in Afghanistan, supporting militant Muslim fighters, buying a rifle and a handgun, that he "thought about" taking up arms in Chechnya, and being an acquaintance of people linked to terrorism (most notably, Khalil al-Deek, Dhiren Barot, and Shahid Akram Butt), he denies the remainder of the U.S.'s allegations.
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Mohammad Khatami
Sayyid Mohammad Khātamī (Persian: سید محمد خاتمی, pronounced [sejˈjed mohæmˈmæde xɒːtæˈmiː]; born October 14, 1943) is an Iranian scholar, philosopher, Shiite theologian and Reformist politician. He served as the fifth President of Iran from August 2, 1997 to August 3, 2005. He also served as Iran's Minister of Culture in both the 1980s and 1990s. He is currently one of the leaders of the Iranian Green Movement, and an outspoken critic of the President Ahmadinejad's government.
Hitherto little known, Khatami attracted global attention during his first election to the presidency when he captured almost 70% of the vote. Khatami had run on a platform of liberalization and reform. During his two terms as president, Khatami advocated freedom of expression, tolerance and civil society, constructive diplomatic relations with other states including those in the Asia and European Union, and an economic policy that supported a free market and foreign investment.
Khatami is known for his proposal of Dialogue Among Civilizations. The United Nations proclaimed the year 2001 as the United Nations' Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations, on Khatami's suggestion.
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Muhammad
Muhammad (c. 26 April 570 – 8 June 632; also transliterated as Mohammad, Mohammed, or Muhammed; Arabic: محمد), full name: Muhammad Ibn `Abd Allāh Ibn `Abd al-Muttalib (Arabic: محمد بن عبدالله بن عبد المطلب ) was a leader from Mecca who unified the tribes of Arabia into a single religious polity under Islam. He is believed by Muslims and Bahá'ís to be a messenger and prophet of God. Muslims believe that Islam was not his own invention but was revealed by God, and most consider him to be the last prophet of God Muslims thus consider him the restorer of an uncorrupted original monotheistic faith (islām) of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and other prophets.
Born in 570 CE in the Arabian city of Mecca, he was orphaned at an early age and brought up under the care of his uncle Abu Talib. He later worked mostly as a merchant, as well as a shepherd, and was first married by age 25. Being in the habit of periodically retreating to a cave in the surrounding mountains for several nights of meditation and prayer, he later reported that it was there, at age 40, that he received his first revelation from God. Three years after this event Muhammad started preaching these revelations publicly, proclaiming that "God is One", that complete "surrender" to Him (lit. islām) is the only way (dīn) acceptable to God, and that he himself was a prophet and messenger of God, in the same vein as other Islamic prophets.
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Muhammad Ijaz-ul-Haq
Ch Muhammad Ijaz-ul-Haq (Punjabi, Urdu: محمد اعجاز الحق) (born 1953) is a prominent Pakistani politician and a businessman who served as a Federal Minister for Religious Affairs and Minorities under the Government of Prime minister Shaukat Aziz. A former Pakistan Army officer, Haq joined the Pakistan Army in 1971, as second lieutnenat, but he left during his term as a Captain. Originally a Bahrain-based banker, Ijaz entered national politics following the assassination of his father, Military President General Zia-ul-Haq, in 1988. He rose to prominence in the Pakistan Muslim League as a right-wing opponent of the succeeding Benazir Bhutto's government. He was appointed Federal minister for Labour within the cabinet of Zia's civilian successor Nawaz Sharif as well as the senior president of the Pakistan Muslim League (N) during its second tenure in the 1990s. He stepped down from the post following differences with Sharif, who was overthrown shortly afterwards by General Pervez Musharraf in 1999.
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Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq
General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (Punjabi, Urdu: محمد ضياء الحق; August 12, 1924 – August 17, 1988), was the 4th Chief Martial Law Administrator and the sixth President of Pakistan from July 1977 to his death in August 1988. Distinguished by his role in the Black September in Jordan military operation in 1970, he was appointed Chief of Army Staff in 1976 by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto after Bhutto forcefully retired seven senior lieutenant-generals who were tainted with their role in the East-Pakistan war in order to bring and promote Zia to four star rank. After widespread civil disorder, he planned and overthrew ruling Prime Minister Bhutto in a bloodless coup d'état on July 5, 1977, code name Fair Play, and became the state's third military ruler to impose martial law. Zia's idea of religious conservatism in Pakistan became the primary line of his military government. Throughout the 1980s, Zia managed to consolidate more and more power in his hands, gradually putting down all opposition groups in Pakistan.
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Nandita Das
Nandita Das (born 7 November 1969) is an award-winning Indian film actress and director. As an actress, she is known for her performances in Fire (1996), Earth (1998), Bawandar (2000), Kannathil Muthamittal (2002) and Aamaar Bhuvan (2002). As a director, she is known for her directorial debut Firaaq (2008), which has won a number of national and international awards. She has been awarded the Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Government of France for her work.. Nandita Das was the first Indian to be inducted into their International Women's Forum's hall of fame.
Das was born in New Delhi to noted Indian painter, Jatin Das, an Oriya Hindu Kayastha (Karanam or "Karan"), and a Gujarati Jain mother named Varsha who is a writer.
She went to Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, Lodhi Estate in New Delhi. She received her bachelor's degree in Geography from Miranda House (University of Delhi) and Master of Social Work from the Delhi School of Social Work.
Nandita Das started her acting career with the theatre group Jana Natya Manch. She taught at the Rishi Valley School.
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P. H. Newby
Percy Howard Newby CBE (25 June 1918 – 6 September 1997) was an English novelist and broadcasting administrator. He was the first winner of the Booker Prize, his novel Something to Answer For having received the inaugural award in 1969.
P.H. Newby, known as Howard Newby, was born in Crowborough, Sussex on 25 June 1918 and was educated at Hanley Castle Grammar School in Worcestershire, and St Paul's College of Education in Cheltenham. In October 1939 he was sent to France to serve in World War II as a private in the Royal Army Medical Corps. His unit was one of the last to be evacuated. Afterwards he was sent to the Middle East and served in the Egyptian desert.
Newby was released from military service in December 1942, and then taught English Literature at King Fouad University in Cairo until 1946.
From 1949 to 1978 he was employed by the BBC, beginning as a radio producer and going on to become successively Controller of the Third Programme and Radio Three, Director of Programmes (Radio), and finally Managing Director, BBC Radio.
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Padma Lakshmi
Padma Parvati Lakshmi (Tamil: பத்மா பார்வதி லக்ஷ்மி, Padmā Pārvati Lakshmi ?; born September 1, 1970) is an Indian American cookbook author, actress, model and television host. Her debut cookbook Easy Exotic won her the "Best First Book" award at the 1999 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. She has been the host of the US reality television program Top Chef since season two in 2006, for which she received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality-Competition Program. In 2010, Top Chef won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Reality-Competition Program.
Padma Lakshmi was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India in a Hindu Iyengar Brahmin family. Her father was a Pfizer executive and her mother Vijaya, the first wife of her father, was a nurse who specialized in suicide prevention. Her mother tongue is Tamil. She grew up shuttling between her grandparents in Chennai and her mother in New York. She is her parents' only child from this marriage. Her parents separated when she was age one. They divorced a year later. Both parents later remarried, and Lakshmi has a younger paternal half-brother and half-sister. The latter formerly worked as an actress and classical dancer but is now pursuing a career with children with special needs. In an interview in The Guardian, Lakshmi said, "My father had quit his job as an executive at Pfizer to manage her career. That was kind of like rubbing salt in the wound. I didn't understand why he wanted that relationship with her, and not with me."
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Paul Auster
Paul Benjamin Auster (born February 3, 1947) is an American author known for works blending absurdism, existentialism, crime fiction, and the search for identity and personal meaning in works such as The New York Trilogy (1987), Moon Palace (1989), The Music of Chance (1990), The Book of Illusions (2002), and The Brooklyn Follies (2005).
Auster was born in Newark, New Jersey, to Jewish middle class parents of Polish descent, Queenie and Samuel Auster. He grew up in South Orange, New Jersey and was graduated from Columbia High School in Maplewood. After graduating from Columbia University in 1970, he moved to Paris, France where he earned a living translating French literature. Since returning to the U.S. in 1974, he has published poems, essays, novels of his own, as well as translations of French writers such as Stéphane Mallarmé and Joseph Joubert.
He and his second wife, writer Siri Hustvedt, were married in 1981, and they live in Brooklyn. Together they have one daughter, Sophie Auster. Previously, Auster was married to the acclaimed writer, Lydia Davis. They have one son together, Daniel Auster.
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Paul Nizon
Paul Nizon (born December 19, 1929 in Bern) is a Swiss art historian and writer.
The son of a Russian chemist and a Swiss mother, after leaving school he studied history of art, classical archaeology and German language and literature in the universities of Berne and Munich. He obtained his doctorate in 1957 with a thesis on Vincent van Gogh. Until 1959 he worked as a scientific assistant at the Historisches Museum in Berne. In 1960 he was awarded a scholarship at the Swiss Institute in Rome. In 1961 he was a leading art critic of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Since 1962 Nizon, who has lived in Paris since 1977, has been a freelance writer. He has held various guest lectureships, including in 1984 in the University of Frankfurt am Main and 1987 in Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri.
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Pavel Kohout
Pavel Kohout (born July 20, 1928, Prague) is a Czech and Austrian novelist, playwright, and poet. He was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, a Prague Spring exponent and dissident in 1970s until he was expelled to Austria. He was a founding member of the Charter 77 movement.
Because he and other dissident theatre workers had been banned from working in the official theatre, he formed the company Living-Room Theatre with the actors Pavel Landovský, Vlasta Chramostová, Vlastimil Třešňák, and his daughter, Tereza Boučková to covertly perform an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Macbeth in living rooms in Prague. Czech-born UK playwright Tom Stoppard's Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth is inspired by these events.
His most notable play is the drama Poor Murderer, that opened on Broadway in Ethel Barrymore Theatre in 1976. It is based on the short story "Thought" by Leonid Andreyev.
His novels include White Book (an absurdist picture of life under Communism), I Am Snowing (a post-Communism story about the opening of the Communist-era secret police informer files, the effect of that opening on the informers and their victims, and thus about the corrosive effect of the Communist regime), The Widow Killer (a detective story set in World War II Nazi-occupied Prague), and The Hangwoman (a black-humor story about executioners).
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Penelope Fitzgerald
Penelope Fitzgerald (17 December 1916 – 28 April 2000) was a Booker Prize-winning English novelist, poet, essayist and biographer. In 2008, The Times included her in a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". In 2012, The Observer named her final novel, The Blue Flower, as one of "The 10 best historical novels".
She was the daughter of Punch editor Edmund Knox and Christina Hicks, one of the first woman students at Oxford. She was the niece of theologian and crime writer Ronald Knox, cryptographer Dilly Knox and Bible scholar Wilfred Knox. Fitzgerald later wrote,
She was educated at Wycombe Abbey and Somerville College, Oxford; she worked for the BBC during World War II. In 1941, she married Desmond Fitzgerald, an Irish soldier; they had three children, a son and two daughters. In the 1960s, she taught at the Italia Conti Academy, a drama school and at Queen's Gate School for Girls. She also worked in a bookshop in Southwold, Suffolk. For a time she lived in Battersea on the Thames, on a houseboat that reportedly sank twice.
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Penelope Lively
Dame Penelope Margaret Lively, DBE, FRSL (born 17 March 1933) is a prolific, popular and critically acclaimed author of fiction for both children and adults. She has been shortlisted three times for the Booker Prize, winning once for Moon Tiger in 1987.
Penelope Low was born in Cairo in 1933. She spent her early childhood in Egypt, before being sent to boarding school in England at the age of twelve. She read Modern History at St Anne's College, Oxford. She married the academic Jack Lively in 1957 and lived with him in Swansea and Oxford, among other places; he died in 1998, and Penelope Lively now lives in north London.
Her writing, like that of her peers Margaret Drabble, Nina Bawden, A. S. Byatt and others, is influenced strongly by an awareness of, and a response to, the sweeping social changes that have taken place in Britain in the course of the twentieth century.
Lively first achieved success with her children's fiction. Her first book, Astercote, was published in 1970. Since then, she has published many other books for children, achieving particular recognition with The Ghost of Thomas Kempe (1973) for which she received the Carnegie Medal and with A Stitch in Time (1976) which won her the Whitbread Award for best children's book.
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Peter Huchel
Peter Huchel (April 3, 1903 – April 30, 1981), born Hellmut Huchel, was a German poet.
Huchel was born in Lichterfelde near Berlin. From 1923 to 1926 Huchel studied literature and philosophy in Berlin, Freiburg and Vienna. Between 1927 and 1930 he travelled to France, Romania, Hungary and Turkey. In 1930, he changed his first name to Peter and befriended Ernst Bloch, Alfred Kantorowicz and Fritz Sternberg. His early poems, published from 1931 to 1936, are strongly marked by the atmosphere and landscape of Brandenburg. In 1934, Huchel married Dora Lassel. The couple would divorce in 1946 and Huchel would marry Monica Rosental in 1953. Between 1934 and 1940, Huchel wrote plays for German radio. During the Second World War, he served as a soldier until he was taken prisoner by the Russians in 1945. After his release, he began working for East German radio and in 1949, he became editor of the influential poetry magazine Sinn und Form ("Sense and Form"). After the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, Huchel came under attack from the East German authorities and the following year he was forced to resign the editorshop of Sinn und Form. From 1962 to 1971, he lived in isolation under Stasi (secret service) surveillance in his house in Wilhelmshorst near Berlin. In 1971, he was finally permitted to leave the German Democratic Republic and move, first to Rome, then to Staufen im Breisgau, where he later died.
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Péter Nádas
Péter Nádas (born 14 October 1942) is a Hungarian writer, playwright, and essayist.
He was born in Budapest as the son of László Nádas and Klára Tauber. After the takeover of the Hungarian Nazis, the Arrow Cross Party on 15 October 1944, Klára Tauber escaped with her son to Bačka and Novi Sad, but returned to the capital directly before the Siege of Budapest. Péter Nádas survived the siege together with his mother in the flat of his uncle, the journalist Pál Aranyossi.
Even though his parents were illegal Communists during World War II and involved with the Communist administration later on, as well, they had both their sons—Péter and Pál—baptized in the Reformed (Calvinist) Church of Pozsonyi Street. His mother died of an illness when he was 13. In 1958, his father—head of department in one of the ministries, slandered with accusations of embezzlement, then exonerated by the court of all charges—committed suicide; Péter Nádas became an orphan at 16. Magda Aranyossi became the guardian of the two children.
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Queen Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; born 21 April 1926) is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms, and head of the 54-member Commonwealth of Nations. She is also head of state of the Crown Dependencies.
Elizabeth was born in London, and educated privately at home. Her father acceded to the throne as George VI in 1936 on the abdication of his brother Edward VIII. She began to undertake public duties during the Second World War, in which she served in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. On the death of her father in 1952, she became Head of the Commonwealth and queen regnant of seven independent Commonwealth countries: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, and Ceylon. Her coronation service in 1953 was the first to be televised. Between 1956 and 1992, the number of her realms varied as territories gained independence and some realms became republics. Today, in addition to the first four aforementioned countries, Elizabeth is Queen of Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Kitts and Nevis.
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Riya Sen
Riya Sen (Bengali: রিয়া সেন [ˈrija ˈʃen]; born Riya Dev Varma on 24 January 1981) is an Indian film actress and model. Riya, who comes from a family of actors including her grandmother Suchitra Sen, mother Moon Moon Sen and sister Raima Sen, began her acting career in 1991 as a child actress in the film Vishkanya. Her first commercial success in her film career was with Style, a 2001 Hindi low-budget sex comedy directed by N. Chandra. Some of her other films include producer Pritish Nandy's musical film, Jhankaar Beats (2003) in Hinglish, Shaadi No. 1 (2005) Malayalam horror film Ananthabhadram (2005).
Riya was first recognised as a model when she performed in Falguni Pathak's music video Yaad Piya Ki Aane Lagi at the age of sixteen. Since then, she has appeared in music videos, television commercials, fashion shows, and on magazine covers. She has been a heartthrob sensation throughout India. Riya has worked as an activist and appeared in an AIDS awareness music video with the aim of dispelling popular myths about the disease. She also helped raise funds for pediatric eye-care. Riya has faced controversies such as a MMS clip with actor Ashmit Patel, her semi-nude photograph on photographer Dabboo Ratnani's annual calendar and her on-screen kisses in a conservative Indian film industry.
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Roddy Doyle
Roddy Doyle (Irish: Ruaidhrí Ó Dúill; born 8 May 1958 in Dublin) is an Irish novelist, dramatist and screenwriter. Several of his books have been made into successful films, beginning with The Commitments in 1991. He was awarded the Booker Prize in 1993.
Doyle grew up in Kilbarrack, Dublin. His mother, Ita Bolger Doyle, was first cousin of the short story writer Maeve Brennan. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from University College Dublin. He spent several years as an English and geography teacher before becoming a full-time writer in 1993.
He established a creative writing centre, "Fighting Words", which opened in Dublin in January 2009. It was inspired by a visit to his friend Dave Eggers' 826 Valencia project in San Francisco. His personal notes and work books reside at the National Library of Ireland.
He is an atheist. He signed a petition supporting journalist Suzanne Breen, who faced gaol for refusing to divulge her sources in court. He joined thousands of angry people from Clontarf to protest against an attempt by Dublin City Council to construct 9ft-high barriers which would interfere with one of his favourite views.
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Ruhollah Khomeini
Sayyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini (روحاللّه مصطفوی موسوی خمینی, Persian pronunciation: [ruːholˈlɑːhe muːsæˈviːje xomeiˈniː], 22 or 24 September 1902 – 3 June 1989) was an Iranian religious leader and politician, and leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution which saw the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. Following the revolution, Khomeini became the country's Supreme Leader — a position created in the constitution as the highest ranking political and religious authority of the nation – until his death.
Khomeini was a marja ("source of emulation") in Twelver Shi'a Islam, author of more than forty books, but is primarily known for his political activities. He spent more than 15 years in exile for his opposition to the last Shah. In his writings and preachings he expanded the Shi'a Usuli theory of velayat-e faqih, the "guardianship of the jurisconsult (clerical authority)" to include theocratic political rule by the Islamic jurists. This principle (though not known to the wider public before the revolution) was installed in the new Iranian constitution after being put to a referendum.
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Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, CBE (born 7 May 1927) is a Booker prize-winning novelist, short story writer, and two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter. She is perhaps best known for her long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, made up of director James Ivory and the late producer Ismail Merchant. Their films won six Academy Awards.
She was born Ruth Prawer in Cologne, Germany to Jewish parents Marcus and Eleanora Prawer. Marcus was a lawyer from Poland and Eleanora's father was cantor of Cologne's biggest synagogue. The family fled the Nazi regime in 1939, emigrating to Britain. Her elder brother, Siegbert Salomon (1925–2012), was honorary fellow of The Queen's College and professor emeritus of German at the University of Oxford, an expert on Heine and horror films.
During World War II she lived in Hendon in London, experienced the Blitz and began to speak English rather than German. She became a British citizen in 1948. She received her MA in English literature from Queen Mary College, University of London in 1951. She also married Cyrus H. Jhabvala, an Indian Parsi architect, in 1951.
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Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (Arabic: صدام حسين عبد المجيد التكريتي Ṣaddām Ḥusayn ʿAbd al-Maǧīd al-Tikrītī; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and later, the Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and its regional organisation Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region, which espoused ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, Saddam played a key role in the 1968 coup, later referred to as the 17 July Revolution, that brought the party to long-term power of Iraq.
As vice president under the ailing General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, and at a time when many groups were considered capable of overthrowing the government, Saddam created security forces through which he tightly controlled conflict between the government and the armed forces. In the early 1970s, Saddam nationalized oil and other industries. The state-owned banks were put under his control, leaving the system eventually insolvent mostly due to the Iran–Iraq War, the Gulf War, and UN sanctions. Through the 1970s, Saddam cemented his authority over the apparatuses of government as oil money helped Iraq's economy to grow at a rapid pace. Positions of power in the country were filled with Sunnis, a minority that made up only a fifth of the population.
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Salman Rushdie
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (Hindi: अहमद सलमान रुशदी (Devanagari), احمد سلمان رشدی (Nastaʿlīq); /sælˈmɑːn ˈrʊʃdi/; born 19 June 1947) is a British Indian novelist and essayist. His second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981. Much of his fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent. He is said to combine magical realism with historical fiction; his work is concerned with the many connections, disruptions and migrations between East and West.
His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), was the centre of a major controversy, provoking protests from Muslims in several countries, some violent. Death threats were made against him, including a fatwā issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, on 14 February 1989.
Rushdie was appointed Commandeur dans Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in January 1999. In June 2007, Queen Elizabeth II dubbed him Knight Bachelor for his services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked him thirteenth on its list of the fifty greatest British writers since 1945.
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Sarah Kirsch
Sarah Kirsch (born April 16, 1935) is a German poet.
She was born Ingrid Bernstein in Limlingerode, Prussian Saxony. She changed her first name to Sarah in order to protest against her father's anti-semitism. She studied biology in Halle and literature at the Johannes R. Becher Institute for Literature in Leipzig. In 1965, she married the writer Rainer Kirsch. She protested against East Germany's expulsion of Wolf Biermann in 1976, which led to her exclusion from the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). One year later she left the country herself, nevertheless being critical of the west as well. She is mainly known for her poetry, but she also writes prose and has translated children's books into German In 1976 Sarah Kirsch was awarded the German international literary Petrarca-Preis. .
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Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow (June 10, 1915 – April 5, 2005) was a Canadian-born American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only writer to win the National Book Award for Fiction three times and he received the Foundation's lifetime Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 1990.
In the words of the Swedish Nobel Committee, his writing exhibited "the mixture of rich picaresque novel and subtle analysis of our culture, of entertaining adventure, drastic and tragic episodes in quick succession interspersed with philosophic conversation, all developed by a commentator with a witty tongue and penetrating insight into the outer and inner complications that drive us to act, or prevent us from acting, and that can be called the dilemma of our age." His best-known works include The Adventures of Augie March, Henderson the Rain King, Herzog, Mr. Sammler's Planet, Seize the Day, Humboldt's Gift and Ravelstein. Widely regarded as one of the 20th century's greatest authors, Bellow has had a "huge literary influence."
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Seema Biswas
Seema Biswas (born 14 January 1965) is an Indian film and theatre actress from Assam who shot into prominence with the role of Phoolan Devi in Shekhar Kapur's film Bandit Queen (1994). She has a reputation for performing strong character roles.
Biswas won the 1996 National Film Award for Best Actress for her role in the film Bandit Queen. She won the 2000 Sangeet Natak Akademi Award and the 2006 Best Actress Genie Award for her role as Shakuntala in Deepa Mehta's Water (2005).
Biswas was born in Nalbari, Assam, to Jagdish and Meera Biswas. Her mother, an early influence, was a history teacher and a pioneering figure for female theatre artistes in Assam; and she came into contact with artists like Bhupen Hazarika, Phani Sarma and Bishnuprasad Rabha early in life.
She studied Political Science at Nalbari College, and later joined the National School of Drama, New Delhi. After graduating from NSD in 1984, she joined the NSD Repertory Company.
Seema Biswas acted as the heroine in Kishan Kartha's Amshini (Hindi) which entered the Indian Panorama Section of Filmotsav 1988. However the general belief is that Biswas debuted after Shekhar Kapur watched her perform in NSD Repertory Company, and offered her a role in Bandit Queen. Although she had earlier acted in Assamese cinema, this was her first big break into Hindi cinema, and she arrived with a bang.
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Shabana Azmi
Shabana Azmi (Hindi: शबाना आज़मी, Urdu: شبانہ اعظمی; born 18 September 1950) is an Indian actress of film, television and theatre. An alumna of the Film and Television Institute of India of Pune, she made her film debut in 1974 and soon became one of the leading actresses of parallel cinema, an Indian New Wave movement known for its serious content and neo-realism. Regarded as one of the finest actresses in India, Azmi's performances in films in a variety of genres have generally earned her praise and awards, which include a record of five wins of the National Film Award for Best Actress and several international honours. She has also received four Filmfare Awards.
Azmi has appeared in over 120 Hindi films in both mainstream and independent cinema, and since 1988 she has acted in several foreign projects. In addition to acting, Azmi is a social and women's rights activist, a Goodwill Ambassador of the United Nations Population Fund (UNPFA), and a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian parliament. She is married to Indian poet and screenwriter Javed Akhtar.
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Shimon Peres
Shimon Peres (help·info) GCMG (Hebrew: שמעון פרס, born Szymon Perski; 2 August 1923) is the ninth and current President of the State of Israel. Peres served twice as the Prime Minister of Israel and once as Interim Prime Minister, and has been a member of 12 cabinets in a political career spanning over 66 years. Peres was elected to the Knesset in November 1959 and, except for a three-month-long hiatus in early 2006, served continuously until 2007, when he became President.
He held several diplomatic and military positions during and directly after Israel's War of Independence. His first high-level government position was as Deputy Director-General of Defense in 1952, and Director-General in 1953 through 1959. During his career, he has represented five political parties in the Knesset: Mapai, Rafi, the Alignment, Labor and Kadima, and has led Alignment and Labour. Peres won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize together with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat for the peace talks that he participated in as Israeli Foreign Minister, producing the Oslo Accords.
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Simone de Beauvoir
Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir (French pronunciation: [simɔn də boˈvwaʁ]; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986), was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, political activist, feminist theorist and social theorist. She did not consider herself a philosopher but her significant contributions to existentialism and feminist existentialism have solidified her legacy as a philosopher and feminist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues. She is now best known for her metaphysical novels, including She Came to Stay and The Mandarins, and for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism.
Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris, the eldest daughter of Georges Bertrand de Beauvoir, a legal secretary who once aspired to be an actor, and Françoise (born) Brasseur, a wealthy banker’s daughter and devout Catholic. Her younger sister, Hélène, was born two years later. The family struggled to maintain their bourgeois status after losing much of their fortune shortly after World War I, and Françoise insisted that the two daughters be sent to a prestigious convent school. Beauvoir herself was deeply religious as a child—at one point intending to become a nun—until a crisis of faith at age 14. She remained an atheist for the rest of her life.
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Stanisław Lem
Stanisław Lem (Polish pronunciation: [staˈɲiswaf ˈlɛm] ( listen); 12 September 1921 – 27 March 2006) was a Polish writer of science fiction, philosophy and satire. He was named a Knight of the Order of the White Eagle. His books have been translated into 41 languages and have sold over 27 million copies. He is perhaps best known as the author of the 1961 novel Solaris, which has been made into a feature film three times. In 1976 Theodore Sturgeon said that Lem was the most widely read science fiction writer in the world.
His works explore philosophical themes; speculation on technology, the nature of intelligence, the impossibility of mutual communication and understanding, despair about human limitations and mankind's place in the universe. They are sometimes presented as fiction, but others are in the form of essays or philosophical books. Translations of his works are difficult due to passages with elaborate word formation, alien or robotic poetry, and puns. Multiple translated versions of his works exist.
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Sándor Weöres
Sándor Weöres (Hungarian pronunciation: [ʃaːndor vørøʃ]; June 22, 1913 - 22 January 1989) was a Hungarian poet and author.
Born in Szombathely, Weöres was brought up in the nearby village of Csönge. His first poems appeared when he was nineteen, being published in the influential journal Nyugat ("West") through the acceptance of its editor, the poet Mihály Babits. Weöres attended the University of Pécs, studying law first before moving on to geography and history. He ultimately received a doctorate in philosophy and aesthetics. His doctoral dissertation The Birth of the Poem was published in 1939. It was in 1937 that he made the first of his travels abroad, going first to Manila for a Eucharistic Congress and then visiting Vietnam and India. During World War II Weöres was drafted for compulsory labor, but was not sent to the front. After the end of the war, he returned to Csönge and briefly lived as a farmer.
In 1948 Weöres again travelled abroad, residing in Italy until 1949. In 1951 he settled in Budapest where he would reside for the rest of his life. The imposition of Stalinism in Hungary after 1948 silenced Weöres and until 1964 little could be published.
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Sławomir Mrożek
Sławomir Mrożek (born 29 June 1930) is a Polish dramatist and writer. In 1963 Mrożek emigrated to France and then further to Mexico. In 1996 he returned to Poland and settled in Kraków. In 2008 he moved back to France.
Mrożek joined the Polish United Workers' Party during the reign of Stalinism in the People's Republic of Poland, and made a living as political journalist. He began writing plays in the late 1950s. His theatrical works belong to the genre of absurdist fiction, intended to shock the audience with non-realistic elements, political and historic references, distortion, and parody.
In 1953, during the Stalinist terror in postwar Poland, Mrożek was one of several signatories of an open letter from ZLP to Polish authorities supporting the persecution of Polish religious leaders imprisoned by the Ministry of Public Security. He participated in the defamation of Catholic priests from Kraków, three of whom were condemned to death by the Communist government in February 1953 after being groundlessly accused of treason (see: Stalinist show trial of the Kraków Curia for more details). Their death sentences were not enforced although Father Józef Fudali died in unexplained circumstances while in prison. Mrożek wrote a full-page article for the leading newspaper in support of the verdict, entitled "Zbrodnia główna i inne" (The Major and other Crimes), comparing death-row priests to degenerate SS-men and Ku-Klux-Klan.
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Tadeusz Różewicz
Tadeusz Różewicz (born 9 October 1921 in Radomsko, Poland) is a Polish poet and writer.
Różewicz belongs to the first generation born and educated after Poland regained its independence in 1918. His youthful poems were published in 1938. During the Second World War, like his brother Janusz (also a poet), he was a soldier of the Polish underground Home Army.
Unlike Janusz, who was executed by Gestapo in 1944, Tadeusz survived the war and by the time of his literary debut in 1960, he was the author of twelve highly acclaimed volumes of poetry. He has since also written over fifteen plays. This eruption of dramaturgical energy was also accompanied by major volumes of poetry and prose. Różewicz is considered one of Poland's best post-war poets and most innovative playwrights.
Some of his best known plays include: The Card Index, The Interrupted Act, Birth Rate, The Hunger Artist Departs, and White Marriage. His New Poems was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2008.
Some works have been translated into German by Ilka Boll.
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Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali (Punjabi, Urdu: طارق علی), (born 21 October 1943), is a British Pakistani military historian, novelist, journalist, filmmaker, public intellectual, political campaigner, activist, and commentator. He is a member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review and Sin Permiso, and regularly contributes to The Guardian, CounterPunch, and the London Review of Books.
He is the author of several books, including Pakistan: Military Rule or People's Power (1970), Can Pakistan Survive? The Death of a State (1991), Pirates Of The Caribbean: Axis Of Hope (2006), Conversations with Edward Said (2005), Bush in Babylon (2003), and Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2002), A Banker for All Seasons (2007), The Duel (2008) and The Obama Syndrome (2010).
Ali was born and raised in Lahore. The city was part of British India at the time of his birth in 1943, but became part of the newly independent nation of Pakistan four years later. He is the son of journalist Mazhar Ali Khan and activist mother Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan (daughter of Sir Sikandar Hyat Khan who led the Unionist Muslim League and was later Prime Minister of the Punjab from 1937–1942).
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Terry Eagleton
Terence Francis Eagleton FBA (born 22 February 1943, Salford) is a British literary theorist and critic, who is regarded as one of Britain's most influential living literary critics. Eagleton currently serves as Distinguished Professor of English Literature at the Lancaster University, and as a former Visiting Professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway.
Formerly Eagleton was Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford (1992–2001) and John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature at the University of Manchester until 2008. In the Fall 2009 semester, Dr Eagleton returned to the University of Notre Dame as a Distinguished Visitor in the Department of English.
He has written more than forty books, including Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983);The Ideology of the Aesthetic (1990), and The Illusions of Postmodernism (1996).
Professor Eagleton delivered Yale University's 2008 Terry Lectures and gave a Gifford Lecture in March 2010, titled The God Debate. He gave the 2010 Richard Price Memorial Lecture at the historically radical Newington Green Unitarian Church, speaking on "The New Atheism and the War on Terror".
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The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register (it became The Times on 1 January 1788). The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times (founded in 1821) are published by Times Newspapers, since 1981 a subsidiary of News International, itself wholly owned by the News Corporation group headed by Rupert Murdoch. The Times and The Sunday Times do not share editorial staff, were founded independently and have only had common ownership since 1967.
The Times is the first newspaper to have borne that name, lending it to numerous other papers around the world, including The Times of India (1838), The Straits Times (1845), The New York Times (1851), The Irish Times (1859), the Los Angeles Times (1881), The Seattle Times (1891), The Daily Times (Malawi) (1900), The Canberra Times (1926), and The Times (Malta) (1935). For distinguishing purposes it is therefore sometimes referred to, particularly in North America, as the "London Times" or "The Times of London".
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Thomas Keneally
Thomas Michael Keneally, AO (born 7 October 1935) is an Australian novelist, playwright and author of non-fiction. He is best known for writing Schindler's Ark, the Booker Prize-winning novel of 1982 which was inspired by the efforts of Poldek Pfefferberg, a Holocaust survivor. The book would later be adapted to Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Born in Sydney, Keneally was educated at St Patrick's College, Strathfield. Subsequently, a writing prize there has been named after him. He entered St Patrick's Seminary, Manly to train as a Catholic priest. Although he was ordained as a deacon while at the seminary he left without being ordained to the priesthood. He worked as a Sydney schoolteacher before his success as a novelist and was a lecturer at the University of New England (1968–70). He has also written screenplays, memoirs and non-fiction books.
Keneally was known as "Mick" until 1964 but began using the name Thomas when he started publishing, after advice from his publisher to use what was really his first name. He is most famous for his Schindler's Ark (1982) (later republished as Schindler's List), which won the Booker Prize and is the basis of the film Schindler's List. Many of his novels are reworkings of historical material, although modern in their psychology and style.
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Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. (born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist. He is a MacArthur Fellow noted for his dense and complex novels, and both his fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, styles and themes, including (but not limited to) the fields of history, science, and mathematics. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon won the 1974 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Hailing from Long Island, Pynchon served two years in the United States Navy and earned an English degree from Cornell University. After publishing several short stories in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he began composing the novels for which he is best known: V. (1963), The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Gravity's Rainbow (1973), and Mason & Dixon (1997). Pynchon is also known for being very private; very few photographs of him have ever been published, and rumors about his location and identity have circulated since the 1960s.
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Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco Knight Grand Cross (born 5 January 1932) is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist. He is best known for his groundbreaking 1980 novel Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose), an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory. He has since written further novels, including Il pendolo di Foucault (Foucault's Pendulum) and L'isola del giorno prima (The Island of the Day Before). His most recent novel Il cimitero di Praga (The Prague Cemetery), released in 2010, was a best-seller.
Eco has also written academic texts, children's books and many essays. He is founder of the Dipartimento di Comunicazione at the University of San Marino, President of the Scuola Superiore di Studi Umanistici, University of Bologna, member of the Accademia dei Lincei (since November 2010) and an Honorary Fellow of Kellogg College, University of Oxford.
Eco was born in the city of Alessandria in the region of Piedmont in northern Italy. His father, Giulio, was an accountant before the government called upon him to serve in three wars. During World War II, Umberto and his mother, Giovanna, moved to a small village in the Piedmontese mountainside. Eco received a Salesian education, and he has made references to the order and its founder in his works and interviews. His family name is supposedly an acronym of ex caelis oblatus (Latin: a gift from the heavens), which was given to his grandfather (a foundling) by a city official.
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V. S. Naipaul
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad "V. S." Naipaul, TC (born 17 August 1932) is an Indo-Trinidadian-British writer known for his novels focusing on the legacy of the British Empire's colonialism. He has also written works of non-fiction, such as travel writing and essays.
Naipaul was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature. He has been awarded numerous other literary prizes, including the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (1958), the Somerset Maugham Award (1960), the Hawthornden Prize (1964), the WH Smith Literary Award (1968), the Booker Prize (1971), the Jerusalem Prize (1983) and the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in British Literature (1993).
J. M. Coetzee, writing in The New York Review of Books in 2001, described Naipaul as "a master of modern English prose". In 2008, The Times ranked Naipaul seventh on their list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Naipaul was born in Chaguanas, Trinidad and Tobago, to parents of Indian descent. He is the son, older brother, uncle, and cousin of published authors Seepersad Naipaul, Shiva Naipaul, Neil Bissoondath, and Vahni Capildeo, respectively. His current wife is Nadira Naipaul, a former Pakistani journalist.
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Vasko Popa
Vasko Popa (Serbian: Васко Попа, June 29, 1922, Grebenac - January 5, 1991) was a Serbian poet of Romanian descent.
Popa was born in the village of Grebenac (Romanian: Grebenaţ), Vojvodina, Serbia. After finishing high school, he enrolled as a student of the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy. He continued his studies at the University of Bucharest and in Vienna. During World War II, he fought as a partisan and was imprisoned in a German concentration camp in Bečkerek (today Zrenjanin, Serbia).
After the war, in 1949, Popa graduated from the Romanic group of the Faculty of Philosophy at Belgrade University. He published his first poems in the magazines Književne novine (Literary Magazine) and the daily Borba (Struggle).
From 1954 until 1979 he was the editor of the publishing house Nolit. In 1953 he published his first major verse collection, Kora (Bark). His other important work included Nepočin-polje (No-Rest Field, 1956), Sporedno nebo (Secondary Heaven, 1968), Uspravna zemlja (Earth Erect, 1972), Vučja so (Wolf Salt, 1975), and Od zlata jabuka (Apple of Gold, 1978), an anthology of Serbian folk literature. His Collected Poems, 1943–1976, a compilation in English translation, appeared in 1978, with an introduction by the British poet Ted Hughes.
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Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (Russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Набо́ков, pronounced [vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr nɐˈbokəf] ( listen); 22 April [O.S. 10 April] 1899c – 2 July 1977) was a multilingual Russian novelist, poet and short story writer. Nabokov's first nine novels were in Russian. He then rose to international prominence as a writer of English prose. He also made serious contributions as a lepidopterist and chess composer.
Nabokov's Lolita (1955) is frequently cited as among his most important novels and is his most widely known, exhibiting the love of intricate word play and synesthetic detail that characterised all his works. The novel was ranked at No. 4 in the list of the Modern Library 100 Best Novels.Pale Fire (1962) was ranked at No. 53 on the same list. His memoir, Speak, Memory, was listed No. 8 on the Modern Library nonfiction list.
Nabokov was born on 22 April 1899 (10 April 1899 Old-Style), in Saint Petersburg,b to a wealthy and prominent Saint Petersburg family of the minor nobility. He was the eldest of five children of liberal lawyer, statesman, and journalist Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov and his wife, Elena Ivanovna née Rukavishnikova. His cousins included the composer Nicolas Nabokov. He spent his childhood and youth in St. Petersburg and at the country estate Vyra near Siverskaya, south of the city.
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Václav Havel
Václav Havel (Czech pronunciation: [ˈvaːt͡slaf ˈɦavɛl] ( listen); 5 October 1936 – 18 December 2011) was a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician.
Havel was the ninth and last president of Czechoslovakia (1989–1992) and the first president of the Czech Republic (1993–2003). He wrote more than 20 plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally.
Havel was voted 4th in Prospect magazine's 2005 global poll of the world's top 100 intellectuals. At the time of his death he was Chairman of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation. He was the founder of the VIZE 97 Foundation and the principal organizer of the Forum 2000 annual global conference.
Havel was one of the signatories of the Charter 77 manifesto, a founding signatory of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, and a council member of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. Havel received many recognitions, including the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Gandhi Peace Prize, the Philadelphia Liberty Medal, the Order of Canada, the freedom medal of the Four Freedoms Award, and the Ambassador of Conscience Award.
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W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden ( /ˈwɪstən ˈhjuː ˈɔːdən/; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973), who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet, born in England, later an American citizen, regarded by many as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. His work is noted for its stylistic and technical achievements, its engagement with moral and political issues, and its variety of tone, form and content. The central themes of his poetry are love, politics and citizenship, religion and morals, and the relationship between unique human beings and the anonymous, impersonal world of nature.
Auden grew up around Birmingham in a professional middle class family and read English literature at Christ Church, Oxford. His early poems, written in the late 1920s and early 1930s, alternated between telegraphic modern styles and fluent traditional ones, were written in an intense and dramatic tone, and established his reputation as a left-wing political poet and prophet. He became uncomfortable in this role in the later 1930s, and abandoned it after he moved to the United States in 1939, where he became an American citizen in 1946. His poems in the 1940s explored religious and ethical themes in a less dramatic manner than his earlier works, but still combined traditional forms and styles with new forms devised by Auden himself. In the 1950s and 1960s many of his poems focused on the ways in which words revealed and concealed emotions, and he took a particular interest in writing opera librettos, a form ideally suited to direct expression of strong feelings.
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William Golding
Sir William Gerald Golding (19 September 1911 – 19 June 1993) was a British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, best known for his novel Lord of the Flies. He was also awarded the Booker Prize for literature in 1980 for his novel Rites of Passage, the first book of the trilogy To the Ends of the Earth.
In 2008, The Times ranked Golding third on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
William Golding was born in his grandmother's house, 47 Mountwise, Newquay, Cornwall and he spent many childhood holidays there. He grew up at his family home in Marlborough, Wiltshire, where his father (Alec Golding) was a science master at Marlborough Grammar School (1905 to retirement). Alec Golding was a socialist with a strong commitment to scientific rationalism, and the young Golding and his elder brother Joseph attended the school where his father taught. His mother, Mildred (Curnroe), kept house at 29, The Green, Marlborough, and supported the moderate campaigners for female suffrage. In 1930 Golding went to Oxford University as an undergraduate at Brasenose College, where he read Natural Sciences for two years before transferring to English Literature.
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William Nygaard
William Nygaard (born 16 March 1943) is a retired Norwegian publisher who graduated with a degree in economics in 1967. He is also chairman of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.
From 1974 to 2010 he was the chief publisher (CEO) of Aschehoug, Norway's second largest publishing house, which is owned by the Nygaard family. When he took this job he followed the footsteps of his father Mads Wiel Nygaard and grandfather William Martin Nygaard who was leading the company in earlier years, and the tradition continues since he left the job to his son, Mads Nygaard. William Nygaard was chairman of the Norwegian Publishers Association from 1987 to 1990.
On 12 April 1989 Aschehoug and William Nygaard was responsible for publishing the Norwegian edition of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses. This was two months after Ayatollah Khomeini issued the following fatwa against Salman Rushdie and his publishers:
Owing to the fatwa, direct threats against William Nygaard and translator Kari Risvik, and the resulting controversy, Nygaard was given police protection for a period.
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Yann Martel
Yann Martel (born June 25, 1963) is a Canadian author best known for the Man Booker Prize-winning novel Life of Pi.
Martel was born in Salamanca, Spain, the son of Nicole Perron and Emile Martel. His parents were French-Canadian. His father was posted as a diplomat for the Canadian government at the time of his birth. He was raised in Costa Rica, France, Mexico, and Canada. As an adolescent he attended high school at Trinity College School, a boarding school in Port Hope, Ontario. As an adult, Martel has spent time in Iran, Turkey and India. After studying philosophy at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Martel spent 13 months in India visiting masjids, churches, temples and zoos, and spent two years reading religious texts and castaway stories. He now lives in Saskatoon. His first published fictional work, Seven Stories, appeared in 1993.
In 2001, he published Life of Pi, which was awarded the Man Booker Prize in 2002.Life of Pi was later chosen for the 2003 edition of CBC Radio's Canada Reads competition, where it was championed by author Nancy Lee. In addition, its French translation, Histoire de Pi, was included in the French version of the competition, Le combat des livres, in 2004, championed by singer Louise Forestier.
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Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith (born on 25 October 1975) is a British novelist. To date she has written three novels. In 2003, she was included on Granta's list of 20 best young authors. She joined New York University's Creative Writing Program as a tenured professor on September 1, 2010.
Zadie Smith was born as Sadie Smith in the northwest London borough of Brent – a largely working-class area – to a Jamaican mother, Yvonne Bailey, and a British father, Harvey Smith. Her mother had grown up in Jamaica and emigrated to Britain in 1969. Their marriage was her father's second. Zadie has a half-sister, a half-brother, and two younger brothers, one of whom is the rapper and stand-up comedian Doc Brown and the other is rapper Luc Skyz. As a child she was fond of tap dancing; as a teenager she considered a career as an actress in musical theatre; and as a university student she earned money as a jazz singer and wanted to become a journalist.
Her parents divorced when she was a teenager. When she was 14, she changed her name to "Zadie". Despite earlier ambitions, literature emerged as her principal interest and would provide a model for her future career.
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Zbigniew Herbert
Zbigniew Herbert ['zbiɡɲɛf ˈxɛrbɛrt] ( listen) (29 October 1924 in Lwów [then Poland, now Lviv, Ukraine] – 28 July 1998 in Warsaw) was a Polish poet, essayist, drama writer, author of plays, and moralist. A member of the Polish resistance movement, Home Army (AK), during World War II, he is one of the best known and the most translated post-war Polish writers. While he was first published in the 1950's (a volume titled String of light was issued in 1956), soon after he voluntarily ceased submitting most of his works to official Polish government publications. He resumed publication in the 1980's, initially in the underground press.
He was a distant relative of the 17th century poet George Herbert.
Herbert was educated as an economist and a lawyer. Herbert was one of the main poets of the Polish opposition to communism. Starting in 1986, he lived in Paris, where he cooperated with the journal Zeszyty Literackie. He came back to Poland in 1992. On 1 July 2007 the Polish Government instituted 2008 as the Year of Zbigniew Herbert.
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Zia-ul-Haq
General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (Punjabi, Urdu: محمد ضياء الحق; August 12, 1924 – August 17, 1988), was the 4th Chief Martial Law Administrator and the sixth President of Pakistan from July 1977 to his death in August 1988. Distinguished by his role in the Black September in Jordan military operation in 1970, he was appointed Chief of Army Staff in 1976 by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto after Bhutto forcefully retired seven senior lieutenant-generals who were tainted with their role in the East-Pakistan war in order to bring and promote Zia to four star rank. After widespread civil disorder, he planned and overthrew ruling Prime Minister Bhutto in a bloodless coup d'état on July 5, 1977, code name Fair Play, and became the state's third military ruler to impose martial law. Zia's idea of religious conservatism in Pakistan became the primary line of his military government. Throughout the 1980s, Zia managed to consolidate more and more power in his hands, gradually putting down all opposition groups in Pakistan.
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Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (Urdu: ذوالفقار علی بھٹو, Sindhi: ذوالفقار علي ڀُٽو, IPA: [zʊlfɪqɑːɾ ɑli bʱʊʈːoː]) (5 January 1928 – 4 April 1979) was 9th Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1973 to 1977, and prior to that, 4th President of Pakistan from 1971 to 1973. Bhutto was the founder of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and served as its chairman until his execution in 1979. His elder daughter, Benazir Bhutto, later also served as Prime Minister, while his son Murtaza Bhutto served as member of Parliament of Pakistan.
Educated at the University of Southern California and University of California, Berkeley in the United States and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, Bhutto was noted for his progressive economic initiatives, industrialisation, education, and foreign policy, and his intellectualism. In addition to national security issues, Bhutto promoted his policies on nationalisation, health care, and social reforms. Under his premiership, Pakistan's Parliament gave approval and passed unanimously the 1973 Constitution of Pakistan, a supreme law that provides a parliamentary system to Pakistan, strengthened Sino-Pakistani and Saudi-Pakistani relations, recognised East-Pakistan as Bangladesh, and hosted the second Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in 1974 where he delegated and invited leaders from the Muslim world to Lahore, Punjab Province of Pakistan. In July 1972, Bhutto successfully proceeded the Shimla treaty, signed with Indira Gandhi of India, brought 93,000 Prisoners of War back to Pakistan, and secured 5,000 sq mi (13,000 km2) held by India. In 20 January 1972, weeks after the Indo-Pakistani 1971 winter war, Bhutto orchestrated, authorised, and administrated the scientific research on nuclear weapons; for this, he is colloquially known in the world as "Father of the Pakistan's nuclear deterrent programme".
wn.com/Zulfikar_Ali_Bhutto
Rushdie, Salman Filmography
- Midnight's Children (2012)
- Next People (2012)
- Midnight's Children (2012)
- Midnight's Children (2012)
- Der goldene Zweig (2012)
- Next People (2012)
- Midnight's Children (2012)
- Salman Rushdie, l'inde imaginaire (2011)
- Odd Streets Run West (2011)
- Amos Oz: The Nature of Dreams (2009)
- La traversée du désir (2009)
- Paperback Dreams (2008)
- Then She Found Me (2007)
- Der Unbequeme - Der Dichter Günter Grass (2007)
- Bill Moyers on Faith & Reason (2006)
- 9/11/03: A Day in the Life of New York (2005)
- The Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch (2004)
- 29th Telluride Film Festival Aug. 30 - Sept. 2, 2002: Terry Gilliam Interviewed by Salman Rushdie (2003)
- 29th Telluride Film Festival Aug. 30 - Sept. 2, 2002: Terry Gilliam Interviewed by Salman Rushdie (2003)
- The Very Best of 'Have I Got News for You' (2002)
- U2: The Best of 1990-2000 (2002)
- Die zehn Gebote der Kreativität (2001)
- Bridget Jones's Diary (2001)
- Dirty Pictures (2000)
- The Beatles Revolution (2000)
- The Lost Portrait (1995)
- Salman Rushdie - fem år efter (1994)
- In Search of Oz (1994)
- Peter's Friends (1992)
Famous quotes by Salman Rushdie:
"What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy."
"If I were asked for a one-sentence sound bite on religion, I would say I was against it"
"Our lives are not what we deserve; they are, let us agree, in many ways deficient."
"Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart."
"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist"
"I hate admitting that my enemies have a point."
"A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return."
"The liveliness of literature lies in its exceptionality, in being the individual, idiosyncratic vision of one human being, in which, to our delight and great surprise, we may find our own vision reflected."
"When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy"
"It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it."
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Christopher Hitchens in Conversation with Salman Rushdie at the 92nd Street Y
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 11:06
- Updated: 07 Dec 2012
Purchase the full program on FORA.tv: fora.tv 92Y Lectures & Conversations: www.92y.org Introduced by Graydon Carter at the 92nd Street Y, Jun 8, 2010, Hitchens was interviewed by Salman Rushdie. They spoke of Hitchens' searing memoir entitled Hitch 22 that lays bare the many contradictions in his life and affirms his conviction that all personal is also political. Christopher Hitchens is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a visiting professor of liberal studies at the New School. He is the author of numerous books, including works on Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, George Orwell, Mother Teresa, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Henry Kissinger and his #1 New York Times bestseller and National Book Award nominee, God Is Not Great. Follow 92Y on Twitter: Twitter.com on Facebook: Facebook Read more on the 92Y Blog: Blog.92Y.org 92Y Lectures & Conversations www.92y.org
http://wn.com/Christopher_Hitchens_in_Conversation_with_Salman_Rushdie_at_the_92nd_Street_Y
Purchase the full program on FORA.tv: fora.tv 92Y Lectures & Conversations: www.92y.org Introduced by Graydon Carter at the 92nd Street Y, Jun 8, 2010, Hitchens was interviewed by Salman Rushdie. They spoke of Hitchens' searing memoir entitled Hitch 22 that lays bare the many contradictions in his life and affirms his conviction that all personal is also political. Christopher Hitchens is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a visiting professor of liberal studies at the New School. He is the author of numerous books, including works on Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, George Orwell, Mother Teresa, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Henry Kissinger and his #1 New York Times bestseller and National Book Award nominee, God Is Not Great. Follow 92Y on Twitter: Twitter.com on Facebook: Facebook Read more on the 92Y Blog: Blog.92Y.org 92Y Lectures & Conversations www.92y.org
Salman Rushdie on Bill Maher discussing "9/11 liberals"
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 7:46
- Updated: 08 Dec 2012
Salman Rushdie on Bill Maher's show September 21, 2012 discussing "9/11 liberals" such as himself, the late and great Christopher Hitchens, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Sam Harris, and even Bill Maher. I myself fit into this category. Great segment to watch!
http://wn.com/Salman_Rushdie_on_Bill_Maher_discussing_9_11_liberals
Salman Rushdie on Bill Maher's show September 21, 2012 discussing "9/11 liberals" such as himself, the late and great Christopher Hitchens, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Sam Harris, and even Bill Maher. I myself fit into this category. Great segment to watch!
- published: 22 Sep 2012
- views: 17525
- author: TheSasss1
Sir Salman Rushdie debate Queston time Christopher Hitchens
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:48
- Updated: 03 Dec 2012
Salman Rushdie knighthood is debated on Question time With Christopher Hitchens, Boris Johnstone, Shirly Williams, Peter Hitchens, Tony McNalty
http://wn.com/Sir_Salman_Rushdie_debate_Queston_time_Christopher_Hitchens
Salman Rushdie knighthood is debated on Question time With Christopher Hitchens, Boris Johnstone, Shirly Williams, Peter Hitchens, Tony McNalty
- published: 26 Jun 2007
- views: 132925
- author: UnitedKingdon
Seth MacFarlane and Salman Rushdie on Israel
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:48
- Updated: 09 Dec 2012
Sanest words on the subject I've heard on television in a long while. Seth MacFarlane's "dumb question" is anything but. And I'm not even a fan of his in general. Ask yourselves, why is so much media and public attention spent on Israel? Whose agendas are really being furthered here? What genocides and human tragedies are ignored in favor of a 60 year old land dispute with no real bearing on most people's lives? Many in favor of supporting a militant Israel are merely interested in using Israel as a pawn. Many in favor of criticizing / chastising Israel are thinly veiled anti-semites. Actual Palestinians and Israelis themselves are largely much more nuanced in their own views and opinions BECAUSE THEY ACTUALLY HAVE TO LIVE THERE. Also: "Somebody's stolen all our Jews!" cracks me up. (Real Time with Bill Maher - Sept. 30th, 2011)
http://wn.com/Seth_MacFarlane_and_Salman_Rushdie_on_Israel
Sanest words on the subject I've heard on television in a long while. Seth MacFarlane's "dumb question" is anything but. And I'm not even a fan of his in general. Ask yourselves, why is so much media and public attention spent on Israel? Whose agendas are really being furthered here? What genocides and human tragedies are ignored in favor of a 60 year old land dispute with no real bearing on most people's lives? Many in favor of supporting a militant Israel are merely interested in using Israel as a pawn. Many in favor of criticizing / chastising Israel are thinly veiled anti-semites. Actual Palestinians and Israelis themselves are largely much more nuanced in their own views and opinions BECAUSE THEY ACTUALLY HAVE TO LIVE THERE. Also: "Somebody's stolen all our Jews!" cracks me up. (Real Time with Bill Maher - Sept. 30th, 2011)
- published: 01 Oct 2011
- views: 54627
- author: SamusekTDS
Salman Rushdie spoke at Dominican University: Joseph Anton: A Memoir
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 69:59
- Updated: 14 Nov 2012
On September 25, 2012, Salman Rusdie spoke of his memoir and experiences of living under a fatwa by the Ayatollah Khomeini. His lecture was presented by the Institute of Leadership Studies of Dominican University of California, Book Passage and sponsored by Private Ocean
http://wn.com/Salman_Rushdie_spoke_at_Dominican_University_Joseph_Anton_A_Memoir
On September 25, 2012, Salman Rusdie spoke of his memoir and experiences of living under a fatwa by the Ayatollah Khomeini. His lecture was presented by the Institute of Leadership Studies of Dominican University of California, Book Passage and sponsored by Private Ocean
- published: 14 Nov 2012
- views: 400
- author: dominicanpenguins
Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children and The Satanic Verses - BBC In Their Own Words
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 15:46
- Updated: 16 Nov 2012
Extract from the BBC documentary In Their Own Words in which they go over the history of British Novel from the voice of the authors. 100% recommended. In this case, I uploaded the video about Salman Rushdie.
http://wn.com/Salman_Rushdie_Midnight's_Children_and_The_Satanic_Verses_BBC_In_Their_Own_Words
Extract from the BBC documentary In Their Own Words in which they go over the history of British Novel from the voice of the authors. 100% recommended. In this case, I uploaded the video about Salman Rushdie.
- published: 30 Jul 2012
- views: 4223
- author: amiguel88
Authors@Google: Salman Rushdie
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 69:55
- Updated: 08 Dec 2012
The Enchantress of Florence is the story of a woman attempting to command her own destiny in a man's world. It is the story of two cities, unknown to each other, at the height of their powers--the hedonistic Mughal capital, in which the brilliant Akbar the Great wrestles daily with questions of belief, desire, and the treachery of his sons, and the equally sensual city of Florence during the High Renaissance, where Niccolò Machiavelli takes a starring role as he learns, the hard way, about the true brutality of power. Salman Rushdie is the author of nine previous novels, including Midnight's Children (which was awarded the Booker Prize in 1981 and, in 1993, was judged to be the "Booker of Bookers," the best novel to have won that prize in its first twenty-five years) and The Satanic Verses (winner of the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel). He is also the author of a book of stories, East, West, and three works of nonfiction---Imaginary Homelands, The Jaguar Smile, and The Wizard of Oz. He is co-editor of Mirrorwork, an anthology of contemporary Indian writing. This event took place on June 18, 2008, as a part of the Authors@Google series.
http://wn.com/Authors@Google_Salman_Rushdie
The Enchantress of Florence is the story of a woman attempting to command her own destiny in a man's world. It is the story of two cities, unknown to each other, at the height of their powers--the hedonistic Mughal capital, in which the brilliant Akbar the Great wrestles daily with questions of belief, desire, and the treachery of his sons, and the equally sensual city of Florence during the High Renaissance, where Niccolò Machiavelli takes a starring role as he learns, the hard way, about the true brutality of power. Salman Rushdie is the author of nine previous novels, including Midnight's Children (which was awarded the Booker Prize in 1981 and, in 1993, was judged to be the "Booker of Bookers," the best novel to have won that prize in its first twenty-five years) and The Satanic Verses (winner of the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel). He is also the author of a book of stories, East, West, and three works of nonfiction---Imaginary Homelands, The Jaguar Smile, and The Wizard of Oz. He is co-editor of Mirrorwork, an anthology of contemporary Indian writing. This event took place on June 18, 2008, as a part of the Authors@Google series.
- published: 19 Jun 2008
- views: 107215
- author: AtGoogleTalks
Salman Rushdie's story: The fatwa years
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:16
- Updated: 16 Nov 2012
The Buck Stops Here: In an exclusive interview to NDTV, author Salman Rushdie says the Anti-Islam online video that has triggered violence in several countries is 'disgusting' but it's 'even more disgusting to kill people in its name.' He also says that India is a more intolerant country today, than when it first gained independence. From attacks on art galleries to recent sedition cases against cartoonists, Mr Rushdie says India is no longer Nehru's country. Nehru was a liberal, he says, who always argued against government censorship. Watch full show: www.ndtv.com
http://wn.com/Salman_Rushdie's_story_The_fatwa_years
The Buck Stops Here: In an exclusive interview to NDTV, author Salman Rushdie says the Anti-Islam online video that has triggered violence in several countries is 'disgusting' but it's 'even more disgusting to kill people in its name.' He also says that India is a more intolerant country today, than when it first gained independence. From attacks on art galleries to recent sedition cases against cartoonists, Mr Rushdie says India is no longer Nehru's country. Nehru was a liberal, he says, who always argued against government censorship. Watch full show: www.ndtv.com
- published: 18 Sep 2012
- views: 3265
- author: ndtv
The Satanic Verses Affair - Salman Rushdi (Documentary) Iran
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 90:44
- Updated: 08 Dec 2012
Twenty years ago, novelist Salman Rushdie was a wanted man with a million pound bounty on his head. His novel, The Satanic Verses, had sparked riots across the Muslim world. The ailing religious leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini, had invoked a little-known religious opinion - a fatwa - and effectively sentenced Rushdie to death. Never before had a novel created an international diplomatic crisis on such a scale, and never before had a foreign Government publicly called for the killing of a private citizen of another country. This film looks back on the extraordinary events which followed the publication of the book and the ten year campaign to get the fatwa lifted. Interviews with Rushdie's friends and family and testimony from leaders of Britain's Muslim community and the Government reveal the inside story of the affair. Rushdie himself was forced into hiding for nearly ten years.
http://wn.com/The_Satanic_Verses_Affair_Salman_Rushdi_Documentary_Iran
Twenty years ago, novelist Salman Rushdie was a wanted man with a million pound bounty on his head. His novel, The Satanic Verses, had sparked riots across the Muslim world. The ailing religious leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini, had invoked a little-known religious opinion - a fatwa - and effectively sentenced Rushdie to death. Never before had a novel created an international diplomatic crisis on such a scale, and never before had a foreign Government publicly called for the killing of a private citizen of another country. This film looks back on the extraordinary events which followed the publication of the book and the ten year campaign to get the fatwa lifted. Interviews with Rushdie's friends and family and testimony from leaders of Britain's Muslim community and the Government reveal the inside story of the affair. Rushdie himself was forced into hiding for nearly ten years.
- published: 19 May 2011
- views: 156543
- author: arashy1981
Salman Rushdie -- Revelle Forum
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 58:06
- Updated: 28 Nov 2012
(Visit: www.uctv.tv Author Salman Rushdie shares details from his autobiography, "Joseph Anton: A Memoir," a compelling account of his years in hiding after being condemned by the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran. He also addresses the infamous anti-Islamic video that has sparked riots across the Middle East in this conversation with with Seth Lerer, the dean of Arts and Humanities at UC San Diego. Series: "Revelle Forum" [10/2012] [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 24055]
http://wn.com/Salman_Rushdie_-_Revelle_Forum
(Visit: www.uctv.tv Author Salman Rushdie shares details from his autobiography, "Joseph Anton: A Memoir," a compelling account of his years in hiding after being condemned by the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran. He also addresses the infamous anti-Islamic video that has sparked riots across the Middle East in this conversation with with Seth Lerer, the dean of Arts and Humanities at UC San Diego. Series: "Revelle Forum" [10/2012] [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 24055]
- published: 08 Oct 2012
- views: 1167
- author: UCtelevision
Salman Rushdie on His Friendship with Christopher Hitchens
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:24
- Updated: 07 Dec 2012
University Distinguished Professor Salman Rushdie participated in a class discussion of "The Moor's Last Sigh" led by Associate Professor of English Deepika Bahri with undergraduate students at Emory University on March 7, 2012. Here he responds to a question about his relationship with the late Christopher Hitchens. "One of the things about being Christopher's friend is that you disagreed with him maybe 75 percent of the time. But he was very enjoyable to disagree with," Rushdie says. "You could actually have very savage disagreements with him and it didn't affect your friendship." The interdisciplinary course, "India Today: Economics, Politics, Innovation, and Sustainability," is supported by The Halle Institute for Global Learning (www.halleinstitute.emory.edu).
http://wn.com/Salman_Rushdie_on_His_Friendship_with_Christopher_Hitchens
University Distinguished Professor Salman Rushdie participated in a class discussion of "The Moor's Last Sigh" led by Associate Professor of English Deepika Bahri with undergraduate students at Emory University on March 7, 2012. Here he responds to a question about his relationship with the late Christopher Hitchens. "One of the things about being Christopher's friend is that you disagreed with him maybe 75 percent of the time. But he was very enjoyable to disagree with," Rushdie says. "You could actually have very savage disagreements with him and it didn't affect your friendship." The interdisciplinary course, "India Today: Economics, Politics, Innovation, and Sustainability," is supported by The Halle Institute for Global Learning (www.halleinstitute.emory.edu).
- published: 21 Mar 2012
- views: 4570
- author: EmoryUniversity
Salman Rushdie Interview on Freedom of Expression
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 42:54
- Updated: 07 Dec 2012
Salman Rushdie Interview
http://wn.com/Salman_Rushdie_Interview_on_Freedom_of_Expression
Salman Rushdie Interview
- published: 18 Sep 2012
- views: 1879
- author: Zubenelgenubiii
LIVE from the NYPL Presents Salman Rushdie
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 26:32
- Updated: 22 Oct 2012
In conversation with Paul Holdengräber, Salman Rushdie discusses his new memoir Joseph Anton which chronicles the years he spent in hiding after being sentenced to death by the Ayatollah Khomeini for writting The Satanic Verses, a novel accused of being "against Islam, the Prophet, and the Quran." Rushdie explains the his struggle for support and understanding and of how he regained his freedom.
http://wn.com/LIVE_from_the_NYPL_Presents_Salman_Rushdie
In conversation with Paul Holdengräber, Salman Rushdie discusses his new memoir Joseph Anton which chronicles the years he spent in hiding after being sentenced to death by the Ayatollah Khomeini for writting The Satanic Verses, a novel accused of being "against Islam, the Prophet, and the Quran." Rushdie explains the his struggle for support and understanding and of how he regained his freedom.
- published: 19 Oct 2012
- views: 244
- author: ThirteenWNET
TAVIS SMILEY | Salman Rushdie | PBS
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:54
- Updated: 20 Nov 2012
To see this entire interview go to video.pbs.org The best-selling author reflects on the tragedy that inspired him to write his memoir, "Joseph Anton." For more information on Salman Rushdie, visit www.pbs.org
http://wn.com/TAVIS_SMILEY_|_Salman_Rushdie_|_PBS
To see this entire interview go to video.pbs.org The best-selling author reflects on the tragedy that inspired him to write his memoir, "Joseph Anton." For more information on Salman Rushdie, visit www.pbs.org
- published: 25 Sep 2012
- views: 1141
- author: PBS
Salman Rushdie on Pakistan: Sucks!
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:57
- Updated: 08 Dec 2012
Selected full forum videos are available at www.theforumchannel.tv Author Salman Rushdie gives his feelings on life in Pakistan and his brush with death. For more information, please visit our website at www.ctforum.org
http://wn.com/Salman_Rushdie_on_Pakistan_Sucks!
Selected full forum videos are available at www.theforumchannel.tv Author Salman Rushdie gives his feelings on life in Pakistan and his brush with death. For more information, please visit our website at www.ctforum.org
- published: 12 May 2010
- views: 101483
- author: CTFORUM
![Christopher Hitchens - On C-SPAN discussing Salman Rushdie and 'The Satanic Verses' [1989]](http://web.archive.org./web/20121209084945im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n8MAt82Af6w/default.jpg "Christopher Hitchens - On C-SPAN discussing Salman Rushdie and 'The Satanic Verses' [1989]")
Christopher Hitchens - On C-SPAN discussing Salman Rushdie and 'The Satanic Verses' [1989]
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 40:12
- Updated: 06 Dec 2012
February 21, 1989. Christopher Hitchens discussed author Salman Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses and the controversy it started. He answered questions from viewers. Credit to C-SPAN: www.c-spanvideo.org
http://wn.com/Christopher_Hitchens_On_C-SPAN_discussing_Salman_Rushdie_and_'The_Satanic_Verses'_1989_
February 21, 1989. Christopher Hitchens discussed author Salman Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses and the controversy it started. He answered questions from viewers. Credit to C-SPAN: www.c-spanvideo.org
- published: 05 Sep 2012
- views: 1754
- author: LeCaNANDian
Salman Rushide on Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Nordic Mythology
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:09
- Updated: 27 Aug 2012
Broadcast on danish national TV. Feel free to download and reupload this video if you like
http://wn.com/Salman_Rushide_on_Christianity,_Islam,_Hinduism_and_Nordic_Mythology
Broadcast on danish national TV. Feel free to download and reupload this video if you like
- published: 24 Jul 2009
- views: 68301
- author: ludersatan
Salman Rushdie and The Satanic Verses Affair
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 90:00
- Updated: 06 Dec 2012
documentaryparadise.com An excellent historical documentary that highlights the trials and tribulations of Salman Rushdie as he struggled to lead a normal life under the constant threat of the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa. The part of the story that most people don't seem to hear about is Rushdie's attempt to convince the Iranian religious leaders to withdraw the fatwa on the basis that he was becoming a more devout muslim. Obviously, it didn't work, but it does show how much pressure Rushdie must have been under at the time.
http://wn.com/Salman_Rushdie_and_The_Satanic_Verses_Affair
documentaryparadise.com An excellent historical documentary that highlights the trials and tribulations of Salman Rushdie as he struggled to lead a normal life under the constant threat of the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa. The part of the story that most people don't seem to hear about is Rushdie's attempt to convince the Iranian religious leaders to withdraw the fatwa on the basis that he was becoming a more devout muslim. Obviously, it didn't work, but it does show how much pressure Rushdie must have been under at the time.
- published: 06 Sep 2012
- views: 4684
- author: maindrivefailure
Salman Rushdie takes Imran Khan to task for skipping India Today Conclave 2012
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 31:47
- Updated: 08 Dec 2012
Salman Rushdie during the last session titled 'Liberty Verses: I am What I am and That's All That I am' of the India Today Conclave in New Delhi on Saturday, March 17, 2012. Salman Rushdie slammed Pakistan's cricketer-turned politician Imran Khan for skipping the India Today Conclave. At the Conclave, Salman Rushdie hints at a "physical resemblance between Imran Khan and Muammar Gaddafi"
http://wn.com/Salman_Rushdie_takes_Imran_Khan_to_task_for_skipping_India_Today_Conclave_2012
Salman Rushdie during the last session titled 'Liberty Verses: I am What I am and That's All That I am' of the India Today Conclave in New Delhi on Saturday, March 17, 2012. Salman Rushdie slammed Pakistan's cricketer-turned politician Imran Khan for skipping the India Today Conclave. At the Conclave, Salman Rushdie hints at a "physical resemblance between Imran Khan and Muammar Gaddafi"
- published: 19 Mar 2012
- views: 29628
- author: indiatodayconclave
Authors@Google: Salman Rushdie
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 56:45
- Updated: 15 Nov 2012
The Authors@Google program was thrilled to welcome renowned authors Salman Rushdie to Google's New York office to discuss his new book "The Enchantress of Florence". Salman Rushdie is the multi-award-winning author of, amongst others, "Midnight's Children", "Shalimar the Clown", "The Satanic Verses", and "Shame". Rushdie is currently the Emory University Distinguished Writer in Residence and was recently awarded knighthood for his services to literature. This event took place on June 5, 2008.
http://wn.com/Authors@Google_Salman_Rushdie
The Authors@Google program was thrilled to welcome renowned authors Salman Rushdie to Google's New York office to discuss his new book "The Enchantress of Florence". Salman Rushdie is the multi-award-winning author of, amongst others, "Midnight's Children", "Shalimar the Clown", "The Satanic Verses", and "Shame". Rushdie is currently the Emory University Distinguished Writer in Residence and was recently awarded knighthood for his services to literature. This event took place on June 5, 2008.
- published: 16 Jun 2008
- views: 15858
- author: AtGoogleTalks
Salman Rushdie talks about new book Joseph Anton
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 10:40
- Updated: 19 Nov 2012
Fri, Oct 26: Author Salman Rushdie drops by The Morning Show to talk about his new book Joseph Anton. For more info, please go to www.globaltoronto.com.
http://wn.com/Salman_Rushdie_talks_about_new_book_Joseph_Anton
Fri, Oct 26: Author Salman Rushdie drops by The Morning Show to talk about his new book Joseph Anton. For more info, please go to www.globaltoronto.com.
- published: 26 Oct 2012
- views: 215
- author: GlobalToronto
Salman Rushdie and Deepa Mehta in Studio Q
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 27:58
- Updated: 07 Dec 2012
www.cbc.ca Salman Rushdie's award-winning novel won the "Booker of Bookers" and now it has been adapted for the big screen by Canadian director Deepa Mehta. They join Jian in Studio Q to talk about the ambitious and daunting project - as epic as the novel on which it is based.
http://wn.com/Salman_Rushdie_and_Deepa_Mehta_in_Studio_Q
www.cbc.ca Salman Rushdie's award-winning novel won the "Booker of Bookers" and now it has been adapted for the big screen by Canadian director Deepa Mehta. They join Jian in Studio Q to talk about the ambitious and daunting project - as epic as the novel on which it is based.
- published: 07 Nov 2012
- views: 1270
- author: Qtv
Salman Rushdie Discusses Creativity and Digital Scholarship with Erika Farr
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 61:37
- Updated: 02 Dec 2012
University Distinguished Professor Salman Rushdie and Erika Farr, digital archives coordinator in the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL) discuss how computers and other technology affect Rushdie's writing and creative process. This builds on previous conversations and addresses new developments such as Rushdie's acquisition of an iPhone and the ways in which mobile computing has an impact on his work. In addition, given Rushdie's work on his memoir and his use of his paper and digital archives in MARBL, the discussion turns to the ways in which archival science and archival access changes the way he uses his own archives.
http://wn.com/Salman_Rushdie_Discusses_Creativity_and_Digital_Scholarship_with_Erika_Farr
University Distinguished Professor Salman Rushdie and Erika Farr, digital archives coordinator in the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL) discuss how computers and other technology affect Rushdie's writing and creative process. This builds on previous conversations and addresses new developments such as Rushdie's acquisition of an iPhone and the ways in which mobile computing has an impact on his work. In addition, given Rushdie's work on his memoir and his use of his paper and digital archives in MARBL, the discussion turns to the ways in which archival science and archival access changes the way he uses his own archives.
- published: 05 Mar 2012
- views: 3728
- author: EmoryUniversity
photo: AP / Bullit Marquez
06 Dec 2012
NEW BATAAN, Philippines - A powerful typhoon that washed away emergency shelters, a military camp and possibly entire families in the southern Philippines has killed almost 350 people with nearly 400 missing, authorities said Thursday. More bodies were retrieved from hardest-hit Compostela Valley and Davao Oriental provinces and six others impacted by Tuesday's storm, the Office of Civil Defense reported ... "It was horrible ... --- ... Location....(size: 8.0Kb)
photo: AP / Osama Faisal
08 Dec 2012
There has been a historic shift in the UN climate talks in Qatar, with the prospect of rich nations having to compensate poor nations for losses due to climate change. The US has fiercely opposed the measure - it says the cost could be unlimited. But after angry tussles throughout the night the principle of Loss and Damage is now in the final negotiating text ... The political stakes are high ... "I will block this ... "I will block this ... ....(size: 3.1Kb)
photo: AP / Vahid Salemi
07 Dec 2012
Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. The in- and out-fighting between present-day Saudi Arabia and Iran is a mirror image of what occurred to Prophet Muhammad's Islamic Movement right after his death ... Still, and due to prosperity and wealth, an influx of trade goods, religious toleration, an emphasis on learning, and increased food supplies, Islam was becoming a vast empire ... Recent U.S ... Dallas Darling (darling@wn.com)....(size: 7.5Kb)
photo: AP / Hassan Ammar
06 Dec 2012
The Egyptian army has deployed tanks and armoured troop carriers outside the presidential palace in Cairo after clashes between supporters and opponents of President Mohammed Morsi left five dead and hundreds injured. But, despite their presence, there are reports of a fresh outbreak of stone-throwing between the two sides. Egypt is seeing growing unrest over a controversial draft constitution ... 'Loud and clear' ... ....(size: 4.0Kb)
The Times of India
09 Dec 2012
Writer Tania James talks about the strange and wonderful influences on her stories — from chanced-upon radio programmes to a misplaced nostalgia. Tania James does not have an obviously Indian name ... Excerpts from an interview... If one of your stories were to be made into a film, would you (like Salman Rushdie) like to actively participate in it?. Sure! The Rushdie-Deepa Mehta team seems an unbeatable combo ... ....(size: 4.8Kb)
The Guardian
09 Dec 2012
Replying exclusively to questions from the Observer, the software king, now wanted for questioning after a neighbour's murder, talks of sensationalist reporting, paranoia and why he's relieved to be in Guatemala ... Photograph. Johan Ordonez/AFP ... It's been chaos ... I interviewed Salman Rushdie recently, another man who went into hiding, for good reason; he said he learned more about himself in that period than at any other time ... Sam is unique....(size: 13.2Kb)
Mail Guardian South Africa
09 Dec 2012
Software company founder John McAfee is pictured after being arrested for entering the country illegally on December 5 in Guatemala City. (AP). By the time I contacted him on Wednesday, even by his own recent standards, John McAfee was having an unpredictable week ... I interviewed Salman Rushdie recently, another man who went into hiding, for good reason; he said he learned more about himself in that period than at any other time ... Fishing....(size: 12.3Kb)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
09 Dec 2012
Snapshot. As a boy growing up in 1950s Appleton, Dave Lee's love of encyclopedias was driven by the words on the page. Each night, he would pull a volume from the shelf and read himself to sleep. Paper Cuts. Part 1. ... But that once-solid foundation has crumpled ... Part 2 ... Employing 538 at its peak in the late 1990s, the mill produced paper for church hymnals, Little Golden Books, and later Salman Rushdie novels and first-edition Harry Potters....(size: 21.5Kb)
The Times of India
08 Dec 2012
Salman Rushdie is sure to have mixed feelings about it ... Salman Rushdie's father Anis Ahmed Rushdie had inducted then Congress leader Bhiku Ram Jain as a tenant to half of his bungalow on the tree-lined Flag Staff Road close to the old Delhi Secretariat on December 20, 1970, for a princely monthly rent of Rs 300 ... The Rushdies had left India for good in 1963, and were located in London when the agreement was signed....(size: 4.6Kb)
The Times of India
08 Dec 2012
Bhubaneswar. Vernacular authors here on Friday asserted language should not be a barrier for any writer to express his/her ideas or emotions. Referring to Salman Rushdie's controversial remark made in the past that literature in vernacular languages is inconsequential, eminent fiction writer Pratibha Ray said, "It is Rushdie's disadvantage that he cannot read vernacular languages." ... "We all have different fingerprints and expressions ... ....(size: 2.6Kb)
The Independent
08 Dec 2012
Salman Rushdie's Joseph Anton (Jonathan Cape, £25) focuses on the fallout of the fatwa following the publication of The Satanic Verses in 1989. In the storytelling mode of third -person narration, its protagonist is Rushdie - though dramatised in the quasi-novelistic figure of Joseph Anton, who endures a decade of fugitive living....(size: 5.7Kb)
Austin American Statesman
08 Dec 2012
That was the knock against “White Teeth,” which set off a long-running debate after literary critic James Wood wrote in The New Republic in 2000 that Smith was regrettably following in the path of Don DeLillo, David Foster Wallace and Salman Rushdie by becoming a part of the “hysterical realism” movement — writing ......(size: 7.6Kb)
Asia Times
07 Dec 2012
Joseph Anton - A Memoir by Salman Rushdie ... Salman Rushdie's book came out a couple of months ago and Nassim Nicholas Taleb's was published at the end of November ... Rushdie provided that with his Satanic Verses ... The poetic license of an author allowed Rushdie to take various flights of fancy within this tortured construct ... Joseph Anton - A Memoir by Salman Rushdie....(size: 20.6Kb)
Sydney Morning Herald
07 Dec 2012
Rushdie cops a serve. SALMAN Rushdie has inspired a fair amount of criticism from various quarters over the years - not least, in a rather extreme fashion, from the Ayatollah Khomeini, who instituted the fatwa on Rushdie after publication of The Satanic Verses ... Hindsight, alas, has had no sobering effect on Rushdie's magisterial amour propre....(size: 1.7Kb)
Indian Express
07 Dec 2012
Deepa Mehta's film adaptation of Salman Rushdie's novel 'Midnight's Children' is slated for a February release in India. The film has been doing the festival rounds already and will be released in India by PVR ... Despite the controversial author Rushdie being involved with the project and Mehta's earlier run-ins with fundamentalists, Bijli is not treating this release as a. special case ... ......(size: 1.7Kb)
Indian Express
07 Dec 2012
By Friday, his comparison of the necessity of censorship to airport security checks was already competing for the literary hall of infamy with his refusal to comment on jailed Chinese dissident and 2010 peace Nobelist, Liu Xiaobo, let alone sign a petition from 134 laureates urging Lius and his wifes release. Salman Rushdie, without contention a heavy payer for his freedom of expression, couldnt hold it in ... ....(size: 2.0Kb)
Business Insider
07 Dec 2012
China had been thrilled to claim its first real Nobel laureate earlier this year, as Mo Yan won the 2012 Nobel prize for literature for his "hallucinatory realism" ... As such, his comments in Sweden on Thursday have broken a lot of hearts ... "But I also hope that censorship, per se, should have the highest principle," he added ... The comments have drawn widespread criticism from around the world, with Salman Rushdie writing on Facebook ... ....(size: 3.1Kb)
| Salman Rushdie | |||
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 Rushdie at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival Vanity Fair party |
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| Born | Ahmed Salman Rushdie (1947-06-19) 19 June 1947 (age 65) Bombay, Bombay Presidency, British India (now Mumbai, Maharashtra, India) |
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| Occupation | writer | ||
| Nationality | British | ||
| Ethnicity | Indian[1] | ||
| Alma mater | King's College, Cambridge | ||
| Genres | Magic realism Satire Postcolonialism |
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| Subjects | Historical criticism Travel writing |
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| Spouse(s) | Clarissa Luard (1976–1987) Marianne Wiggins (1988–1993) Elizabeth West (1997–2004) Padma Lakshmi (2004–2007) |
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Influences
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Influenced
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Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (Hindi: अहमद सलमान रुशदी (Devanagari), احمد سلمان رشدی (Nastaʿlīq); /sælˈmɑːn ˈrʊʃdi/;[2] born 19 June 1947) is a British Indian novelist and essayist. His second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981. Much of his fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent. He is said to combine magical realism with historical fiction; his work is concerned with the many connections, disruptions and migrations between East and West.
His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), was the centre of a major controversy, provoking protests from Muslims in several countries, some violent. Death threats were made against him, including a fatwā issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, on 14 February 1989.
Rushdie was appointed Commandeur dans Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in January 1999.[3] In June 2007, Queen Elizabeth II dubbed him Knight Bachelor for his services to literature.[4] In 2008, The Times ranked him thirteenth on its list of the fifty greatest British writers since 1945.[5]
Since 2000, Rushdie has "lived mostly near Union Square" in New York City.[6] In 2007 he began a five-year term as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, where he has also deposited his archives.[7] In May 2008 he was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[8]
His latest novel is Luka and the Fire of Life, published in November 2010. Earlier the same year, he announced that he was writing his memoirs.[9]
Contents |
Early life and family background[link]
The only son of Anis Ahmed Rushdie, a University of Cambridge-educated lawyer turned businessman, and Negin Bhatt, a teacher, Rushdie was born in Bombay, India, into a Muslim family of Kashmiri descent.[10][11][12] He was educated at Cathedral and John Connon School in Mumbai, Rugby School, and King's College, University of Cambridge, where he studied history.
Career[link]
Copywriter[link]
Rushdie's first career was as a copywriter, working for the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather, where he came up with "irresistibubble" for Aero and "Naughty but Nice" for cream cakes, and for the agency Ayer Barker, for whom he wrote the memorable line "That'll do nicely" for American Express. It was while he was at Ogilvy that he wrote Midnight's Children, before becoming a full-time writer.[13][14][15] John Hegarty of Bartle Bogle Hegarty has criticised Rushdie for not referring to his copywriting past frequently enough, although conceding: "He did write crap ads ... admittedly."[16]
Major literary work[link]
His first novel, Grimus, a part-science fiction tale, was generally ignored by the public and literary critics. His next novel, Midnight's Children, catapulted him to literary notability. It significantly shaped the course that Indian writing in English followed over the next decade, and is regarded by many as one of the great books of the last 100 years.[citation needed] This work won the 1981 Booker Prize and, in 1993 and 2008, was awarded the Best of the Bookers as the best novel to have received the prize during its first 25 and 40 years.[17] Midnight's Children follows the life of a child, born at the stroke of midnight as India gained its independence, who is endowed with special powers and a connection to other children born at the dawn of a new and tumultuous age in the history of the Indian sub-continent and the birth of the modern nation of India. The character of Saleem Sinai has been compared to Rushdie.[18]
After Midnight's Children, Rushdie wrote Shame (1983), in which he depicts the political turmoil in Pakistan, basing his characters on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Shame won France's Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Best Foreign Book) and was a close runner-up for the Booker Prize. Both these works of postcolonial literature are characterised by a style of magic realism and the immigrant outlook that Rushdie is very conscious of as a member of the Indian diaspora.
Rushdie wrote a non-fiction book about Nicaragua in the 1980s, The Jaguar Smile (1987). The book has a political focus and is based on his first-hand experiences and research at the scene of Sandinista political experiments.
His most controversial work, The Satanic Verses, was published in 1988 (see section below). Rushdie has published many short stories, including those collected in East, West (1994). The Moor's Last Sigh, a family epic ranging over some 100 years of India's history was published in 1995. The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999) presents an alternative history of modern rock music. The song of the same name by U2 is one of many song lyrics included in the book, hence Rushdie is credited as the lyricist. He also wrote "Haroun and the Sea of Stories" in 1990.
Rushdie has had a string of commercially successful and critically acclaimed novels. His 2005 novel Shalimar the Clown received, in India, the prestigious Hutch Crossword Book Award, and was, in Britain, a finalist for the Whitbread Book Awards. It was shortlisted for the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.[19]
In his 2002 non-fiction collection Step Across This Line, he professes his admiration for the Italian writer Italo Calvino and the American writer Thomas Pynchon, among others. His early influences included James Joyce, Günter Grass, Jorge Luis Borges, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Lewis Carroll. Rushdie was a personal friend of Angela Carter and praised her highly in the foreword for her collection Burning your Boats.
In 2012, Salman Rushdie became one of the first major authors to embrace Booktrack--a company that synchronises ebooks with customised soundtracks to create an immersive reading experience—when he published his short story In the South on the platform.[20]
Other activities[link]
Rushdie has quietly mentored younger Indian (and ethnic-Indian) writers, influenced an entire generation of Indo-Anglian writers, and is an influential writer in postcolonial literature in general.[21] He has received many plaudits for his writings, including the European Union's Aristeion Prize for Literature, the Premio Grinzane Cavour (Italy), and the Writer of the Year Award in Germany and many of literature's highest honours.[22] Rushdie was the President of PEN American Center from 2004 to 2006.
He opposed the British government's introduction of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act, something he writes about in his contribution to Free Expression Is No Offence, a collection of essays by several writers, published by Penguin in November 2005.
In 2006, Rushdie joined the Emory University faculty as Distinguished Writer in Residence for a five-year term.[23] Though he enjoys writing, Salman Rushdie says that he would have become an actor if his writing career had not been successful. Even from early childhood, he dreamed of appearing in Hollywood movies (which he later realised in his frequent cameo appearances).
Rushdie includes fictional television and movie characters in some of his writings. He had a cameo appearance in the film Bridget Jones's Diary based on the book of the same name, which is itself full of literary in-jokes. On 12 May 2006, Rushdie was a guest host on The Charlie Rose Show, where he interviewed Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta, whose 2005 film, Water, faced violent protests. He appears in the role of Helen Hunt's obstetrician-gynecologist in the film adaptation (Hunt's directorial debut) of Elinor Lipman's novel Then She Found Me. In September 2008, and again in March 2009, he appeared as a panellist on the HBO program "Real Time With Bill Maher".
Rushdie is currently collaborating on the screenplay for the cinematic adaptation of his novel Midnight's Children with director Deepa Mehta. The film will be called Midnight's Children.[24][25] While casting is still in progress, Seema Biswas, Shabana Azmi, Nandita Das,[26] and Irrfan Khan are confirmed as participating in the film.[27] Mehta has stated that production will begin in September, 2010.[28]
Rushdie announced in June 2011 that he had written the first draft of a script for a new television series for the U.S. cable network Showtime, a project on which he will also serve as an executive producer. The new series, to be called The Next People, will be, according to Rushie, "a sort of paranoid science-fiction series, people disappearing and being replaced by other people." The idea of a television series was suggested by his U.S. agents, said Rushdie, who felt that television would allow him more creative control than feature film. The Next People is being made by the British film production company Working Title, the firm behind such projects as Four Weddings and a Funeral and Shaun of the Dead.[29]
Rushdie is a member of the advisory board of The Lunchbox Fund,[30] a non-profit organisation which provides daily meals to students of township schools in Soweto of South Africa. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America,[31] an advocacy group representing the interests of atheistic and humanistic Americans in Washington, D.C. In November 2010 he became a founding patron of Ralston College, a new liberal arts college that has adopted as its motto a Latin translation of a phrase ("free speech is life itself") from an address he gave at Columbia University in 1991 to mark the two-hundredth anniversary of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution.[32]
He took on Facebook over the use of his name in 2011. He won. Rushdie had asked to use his middle name Salman, which he is most recognised by. He described his online identity crisis in a series of messages posted on Twitter, among them ""Dear #Facebook, forcing me to change my FB name from Salman to Ahmed Rushdie is like forcing J. Edgar to become John Hoover" and "Or, if F. Scott Fitzgerald was on #Facebook, would they force him to be Francis Fitzgerald? What about F. Murray Abraham?" Messages such as these were then circulated online. Facebook eventually relented and allowed him to use the name by which he is universally known.[33][34]
[edit] The Satanic Verses and the fatwā
Further information: The Satanic Verses controversy
The publication of The Satanic Verses in September 1988 caused immediate controversy in the Islamic world because of what was perceived as an irreverent depiction of the prophet Muhammad. The title refers to a disputed Muslim tradition that is related in the book. According to this tradition, Muhammad (Mahound in the book) added verses (sura) to the Qur'an accepting three goddesses who used to be worshipped in Mecca as divine beings. According to the legend, Muhammad later revoked the verses, saying the devil tempted him to utter these lines to appease the Meccans (hence the "Satanic" verses). However, the narrator reveals to the reader that these disputed verses were actually from the mouth of the Archangel Gibreel. The book was banned in many countries with large Muslim communities. (12 total: India, Bangladesh, Sudan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Thailand, Tanzania, Indonesia, Singapore, Venezuela and Pakistan)
On 14 February 1989, a fatwā requiring Rushdie's execution was proclaimed on Radio Tehran by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of Iran at the time, calling the book "blasphemous against Islam" (chapter IV of the book depicts the character of an Imam in exile who returns to incite revolt from the people of his country with no regard for their safety). A bounty was offered for Rushdie's death, and he was thus forced to live under police protection for several years. On 7 March 1989, the United Kingdom and Iran broke diplomatic relations over the Rushdie controversy.
The publication of the book and the fatwā sparked violence around the world, with bookstores firebombed. Muslim communities in several nations in the West held public rallies, burning copies of the book. Several people associated with translating or publishing the book were attacked, seriously injured, and even killed.[note 1] Many more people died in riots in some countries. Despite the danger posed by the fatwā, Rushdie made a public appearance at London's Wembley Stadium on 11 August 1993 during a concert by U2. In 2010, U2 bassist Adam Clayton recalled that "[lead vocalist] Bono had been calling Salman Rushdie from the stage every night on the Zoo TV tour. When we played Wembley, Salman showed up in person and the stadium erupted. You [could] tell from [drummer] Larry Mullen, Jr.'s face that we weren't expecting it. Salman was a regular visitor after that. He had a backstage pass and he used it as often as possible. For a man who was supposed to be in hiding, it was remarkably easy to see him around the place."[35]
On 24 September 1998, as a precondition to the restoration of diplomatic relations with Britain, the Iranian government, then headed by Mohammad Khatami, gave a public commitment that it would "neither support nor hinder assassination operations on Rushdie."[36][37]
Hardliners in Iran have continued to reaffirm the death sentence.[38] In early 2005, Khomeini's fatwā was reaffirmed by Iran's current spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a message to Muslim pilgrims making the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.[39] Additionally, the Revolutionary Guards have declared that the death sentence on him is still valid.[40] Iran has rejected requests to withdraw the fatwā on the basis that only the person who issued it may withdraw it,[39] and the person who issued it – Ayatollah Khomeini – has been dead since 1989.
Rushdie has reported that he still receives a "sort of Valentine's card" from Iran each year on 14 February letting him know the country has not forgotten the vow to kill him. He said, "It's reached the point where it's a piece of rhetoric rather than a real threat."[41] Despite the threats on Rushdie, he has publicly said that his family has never been threatened and that his mother (who lived in Pakistan during the later years of her life) even received outpourings of support.[42]
A former bodyguard to Rushdie, Ron Evans, planned to publish a book recounting the behaviour of the author during the time he was in hiding. Evans claimed that Rushdie tried to profit financially from the fatwa and was suicidal, but Rushdie dismissed the book as a "bunch of lies" and took legal action against Ron Evans, his co-author and their publisher.[43] On 26 August 2008 Rushdie received an apology at the High Court in London from all three parties.[44] A memoir of his years of hiding, Joseph Anton, is due to be published 18 September 2012. Joseph Anton was Rushdie's secret alias.[45]
Failed assassination attempt and Hezbollah's comments[link]
On 3 August 1989, while Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh was priming a book bomb loaded with RDX explosives in a hotel in Paddington, Central London, the bomb exploded prematurely, destroying two floors of the hotel and killing Mazeh. A previously unknown Lebanese group, the Organization of the Mujahidin of Islam, said he died preparing an attack "on the apostate Rushdie". There is a shrine in Tehran's Behesht-e Zahra cemetery for Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh that says he was "Martyred in London, 3 August 1989. The first martyr to die on a mission to kill Salman Rushdie." Mazeh's mother was invited to relocate to Iran, and the Islamic World Movement of Martyrs' Commemoration built his shrine in the cemetery that holds thousands of Iranian soldiers slain in the Iran–Iraq War.[36] During the 2006 Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah declared that "If there had been a Muslim to carry out Imam Khomeini's fatwā against the renegade Salman Rushdie, this rabble who insult our Prophet Mohammed in Denmark, Norway and France would not have dared to do so. I am sure there are millions of Muslims who are ready to give their lives to defend our prophet's honour and we have to be ready to do anything for that."[46] James Phillips of the Heritage Foundation testified before the United States Congress that a "March 1989" [sic] explosion in Britain was a Hezbollah attempt to assassinate Rushdie that failed when a bomb exploded prematurely, killing a Hezbollah activist in London.[47]
[edit] International Guerillas
In 1990, soon after the publication of The Satanic Verses, a Pakistani film entitled International Gorillay (International Guerillas) was released that depicted Rushdie as plotting to cause the downfall of Pakistan by opening a chain of casinos and discos in the country. The film was popular with Pakistani audiences, and it "presents Rushdie as a Rambo-like figure pursued by four Pakistani guerrillas".[48] The British Board of Film Classification refused to allow it a certificate, as "it was felt that the portrayal of Rushdie might qualify as criminal libel, causing a breach of the peace as opposed to merely tarnishing his reputation."[49] This effectively prevented the release of the film in Britain. Two months later, however, Rushdie himself wrote to the board, saying that while he thought the film "a distorted, incompetent piece of trash", he would not sue if it were released.[49] He later said, "If that film had been banned, it would have become the hottest video in town: everyone would have seen it".[49] While the film was a great hit in Pakistan, it went virtually unnoticed in the West.[49]
2012 Jaipur Literature Festival events[link]
Main article: Jaipur Literature Festival
Rushdie was due to appear at the Jaipur Literature Festival in January 2012.[50] However, he later cancelled, and indeed cancelled his complete tour of India citing a possible threat to his life as the primary reason.[51][52] He investigated police reports that paid assassins had been hired to kill him and suggested the police might be lying.[53]
Meanwhile, the police, on the advice of officials, sought Ruchir Joshi, Jeet Thayil, Hari Kunzru and Amitava Kumar. They fled from Jaipur after reading excerpts from The Satanic Verses at the Jaipur Literature Festival. In India the import of the book is banned via customs. However, reading from an existing copy of the book is not illegal.[54]
A proposed video link session between Rushdie and the Jaipur Literature Festival was cancelled at the last minute[55] after the government pressured the festival to stop it.[53] Rushdie returned to India to address a conference in Delhi on 16 March 2012.[56]
Knighthood[link]
Main article: Knighthood of Salman Rushdie
Rushdie was knighted for services to literature in the Queen's Birthday Honours on 16 June 2007. He remarked, "I am thrilled and humbled to receive this great honour, and am very grateful that my work has been recognised in this way."[57] In response to his knighthood, many nations with Muslim majorities protested. Parliamentarians of several of these countries condemned the action, and Iran and Pakistan called in their British envoys to protest formally. Controversial condemnation issued by Pakistan's Religious Affairs Minister Muhammad Ijaz-ul-Haq was in turn rebuffed by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Ironically, their respective fathers Zia-ul-Haq and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had been earlier portrayed in Rushdie's novel Shame. Mass demonstrations against Rushdie's knighthood took place in Pakistan and Malaysia. Several called publicly for his death. Some non-Muslims expressed disappointment at Rushdie's knighthood, claiming that the writer did not merit such an honour and there were several other writers who deserved the knighthood more than Rushdie.[58]
Al-Qaeda has condemned the Rushdie honour. The Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is quoted as saying in an audio recording that Britain's award for Indian-born Rushdie was "an insult to Islam", and it was planning "a very precise response."[59]
Religious and political beliefs[link]
Rushdie came from a Muslim family but says that he was never really religious. In 1990, in the "hope that it would reduce the threat of Muslims acting on the fatwa to kill him," he issued a statement claiming he had renewed his Muslim faith, had repudiated the attacks on Islam in his novel and was committed to working for better understanding of the religion across the world. However, Rushdie later said that he was only "pretending".[60]
His books often focus on the role of religion in society and conflicts between faiths and between the religious and those of no faith.
Rushdie advocates the application of higher criticism, pioneered during the late 19th century. Rushdie called for a reform in Islam[61] in a guest opinion piece printed in The Washington Post and The Times in mid-August 2005:
What is needed is a move beyond tradition, nothing less than a reform movement to bring the core concepts of Islam into the modern age, a Muslim Reformation to combat not only the jihadist ideologues but also the dusty, stifling seminaries of the traditionalists, throwing open the windows to let in much-needed fresh air. (...) It is high time, for starters, that Muslims were able to study the revelation of their religion as an event inside history, not supernaturally above it. (...) Broad-mindedness is related to tolerance; open-mindedness is the sibling of peace.
Rushdie supported the 1999 NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, leading the leftist Tariq Ali to label Rushdie and other "warrior writers" as "the belligerati'".[62] He was supportive of the US-led campaign to remove the Taliban in Afghanistan, which began in 2001, but was a vocal critic of the 2003 war in Iraq. He has stated that while there was a "case to be made for the removal of Saddam Hussein", US unilateral military intervention was unjustifiable.[63]
In the wake of the 'Danish Cartoons Affair' in March 2006—which many considered an echo of the death threats and fatwā that followed publication of The Satanic Verses in 1989[64]—Rushdie signed the manifesto 'Together Facing the New Totalitarianism', a statement warning of the dangers of religious extremism. The Manifesto was published in the left-leaning French weekly Charlie Hebdo in March 2006.
In 2006, Rushdie stated that he supported comments by the then-Leader of the House of Commons Jack Straw, who criticised the wearing of the niqab (a veil that covers all of the face except the eyes). Rushdie stated that his three sisters would never wear the veil. He said, "I think the battle against the veil has been a long and continuing battle against the limitation of women, so in that sense I'm completely on Straw's side."[65]
The Marxist Catholic critic Terry Eagleton, a former admirer of Rushdie's work, attacked him for his positions, saying he "cheered on the Pentagon's criminal ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan".[66] However, Eagleton subsequently apologised for having misrepresented Rushdie's views.
At an appearance at 92nd Street Y, Rushdie expressed his view on copyright when answering a question whether he had considered copyright law a barrier (or impediment) to free speech.
No. But that's because I write for a living, [laughs] and I have no other source of income, and I naïvely believe that stuff that I create belongs to me, and that if you want it you might have to give me some cash. [...] My view is I do this for a living. The thing wouldn't exist if I didn't make it and so it belongs to me and don't steal it. You know. It's my stuff.[67]
When Amnesty International (AI) suspended human rights activist Gita Sahgal for saying to the press that she thought AI should distance itself from Moazzam Begg and his organisation, Rushdie said:
Amnesty ... has done its reputation incalculable damage by allying itself with Moazzam Begg and his group Cageprisoners, and holding them up as human rights advocates. It looks very much as if Amnesty's leadership is suffering from a kind of moral bankruptcy, and has lost the ability to distinguish right from wrong. It has greatly compounded its error by suspending the redoubtable Gita Sahgal for the crime of going public with her concerns. Gita Sahgal is a woman of immense integrity and distinction.... It is people like Gita Sahgal who are the true voices of the human rights movement; Amnesty and Begg have revealed, by their statements and actions, that they deserve our contempt.[68]
Personal life[link]
Rushdie has been married four times. He was married to his first wife Clarissa Luard from 1976 to 1987 and fathered a son, Zafar (born 1980). His second wife was the American novelist Marianne Wiggins; they were married in 1988 and divorced in 1993. His third wife, from 1997 to 2004, was Elizabeth West; they have a son, Milan (born 1999). In 2004, he married the Indian American actress and model Padma Lakshmi, the host of the American reality-television show Top Chef. The marriage ended on 2 July 2007, with Lakshmi indicating that it was her desire to end the marriage. In 2008 the Bollywood press romantically linked him to the Indian model Riya Sen, with whom he was otherwise a friend.[69] In response to the media speculation about their friendship, she simply stated "I think when you are Salman Rushdie, you must get bored with people who always want to talk to you about literature."[70]
In 1999 Rushdie had an operation to correct ptosis, a tendon condition that causes drooping eyelids and that, according to him, was making it increasingly difficult for him to open his eyes. "If I hadn't had an operation, in a couple of years from now I wouldn't have been able to open my eyes at all," he said.[71]
Bibliography[link]
Novels[link]
- Grimus (1975)
- Midnight's Children (1981)
- Shame (1983)
- The Satanic Verses (1988)
- The Moor's Last Sigh (1995)
- The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999)
- Fury (2001)
- Shalimar the Clown (2005)
- The Enchantress of Florence (2008)
Collections[link]
- Homeless by Choice (1992, with R. Jhabvala and V. S. Naipaul)
- East, West (1994)
- The Best American Short Stories (2008, as Guest Editor)
Children's books[link]
- Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990)
- Luka and the Fire of Life (2010)
Essays and non-fiction[link]
- The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey (1987)
- "In Good Faith", Granta, 1990
- Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981–1991 (1992)
- "The Wizard of Oz: BFI Film Classics", BFI, 1992.
- "Mohandas Gandhi." Time, 13 April 1998.
- "Imagine There Is No Heaven." , extracted contribution from Letters to the Six Billionth World Citizen, a UN sponsored publication in English by Uitgeverij Podium, Amsterdam. The Guardian, 16 October 1999.
- Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992–2002 (2002)
- "A fine pickle." The Guardian, 28 February 2009.
- "In the South." Booktrack, 7 February 2012
Awards[link]
- Aristeion Prize (European Union)
- Arts Council Writers' Award
- Author of the Year (British Book Awards)
- Author of the Year (Germany)
- Booker Prize for Fiction
- Booker of Bookers for the best novel among the Booker Prize winners for Fiction awarded at its 25th anniversary (in 1993)
- The Best of the Booker awarded to commemorate the Booker Prize's 40th anniversary (in 2008), winner by public vote
- Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France)
- English-Speaking Union Award
- Honorary Patron, University Philosophical Society, Trinity College, Dublin.
- Hutch Crossword Book Award (India)
- India Abroad Lifetime Achievement Award (USA)
- James Tait Black Memorial Prize (Fiction)
- Kurt Tucholsky Prize (Sweden)
- Mantua Prize (Italy)
- James Joyce Award – University College Dublin
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology Honorary Professorship
- Chapman University Honorary Doctorate – Doctor of Humane Letters
- Outstanding Lifetime Achievement in Cultural Humanism (Harvard University)
- Premio Grinzane Cavour (Italy)
- Prix Colette (Switzerland)
- Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger
- St. Louis Literary Award – Saint Louis University
- State Prize for Literature (Austria)
- Whitbread Novel Award (twice)
- Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award for Children's Fiction
- University of Liège Doctor honoris causa
See also[link]
- Blitcon, British literary conservatives
- Censorship in South Asia
- International PEN
- List of fatwas
- The Butterfly Hunter
- The Satanic Verses controversy
Notes[link]
References[link]
- ^ Cristina Emanuela Dascalu (2007) Imaginary homelands of writers in exile: Salman Rushdie, Bharati Mukherjee, and V.S. Naipaul p.131
- ^ Pointon, Graham (ed.): BBC Pronouncing Dictionary of British Names, 2nd edition. Oxford Paperbacks, 1990.
- ^ "Rushdie to Receive Top Literary Award", Chicago Tribune, 7 January 1999. Retrieved 26 March 2012.
- ^ "Birthday Honours List—United Kingdom", London Gazette, Issue 58358, Supplement No. 1, 16 June 2007. Retrieved 26 March 2012.
- ^ "The 50 Greatest British Writers Since 1945". The Times, 5 January 2008. Retrieved 1 January 2010. Subscription required.
- ^ Laura M. Holson, "From Exile to Everywhere", The New York Times, 23 March 2012 (online), 25 March 2012 (print). Retrieved 26 March 2012.
- ^ "Salman Rushdie to Teach and Place His Archive at Emory University", Emory University Media Release, 6 October 2006. Retrieved 26 March 2012.
- ^ Academicians Database, American Academy of Arts and Letters. Retrieved 26 March 2012.
- ^ "Rushdie Will Write a Book About Life in Hiding", Emory University What's New, 10 March 2010. Retrieved 26 March 2012.
- ^ Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/shalimar-the-clown-by-salman-rushdie-506114.html. Retrieved 2 December 2010. "Salman Rushdie the Kashmiri writes from the heart as he describes this dark incandescence."
- ^ "Literary Encyclopedia: Salman Rushdie", Literary Encyclopedia. Retrieved 20 January 2008
- ^ "Salman Rushdie (1947–)", c. 2003, Retrieved 20 January 2008
- ^ "Salman Rushdie biography", 2004, British Counsel. Retrieved 20 January 2008.
- ^ Negative because there is little positive to say, Herald Scotland, George Birrell , 18 Jan 1997
- ^ "The birth pangs of Midnight’s Children", 1 April 2006
- ^ Armstrong, Stephen (13 June 2011). "John Hegarty: Why television is the place advertisers want to be again". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jun/13/interview-john-hegarty-bbh.
- ^ "Readers across the world agree that Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children is the Best of the Booker.". Man Booker Prizes. 2008. http://www.themanbookerprize.com/news/stories/1099. Retrieved 10 July 2008.
- ^ Saleem (Sinai) is not Salman (Rushdie)(although he marries a Padma) and Saleem's grandfather Dr Aadam Aziz is not him either, but there is a touching prescience at work here. In the opening pages of Midnight's Children, Dr Aziz while bending down on his prayer mat, bumps his nose on a hard tussock of earth. His nose bleeds and his eyes water and he decides then and there that never again will he bow before God or man. 'This decision, however, made a hole in him, a vacancy in a vital inner chamber, leaving him vulnerable to women and history.' Battered by a fatwa and one femme fatale too many, Sir Salman would have some understanding of this. One more bouquet for Saleem Sinai 20 July 2008 by Nina Martyris, TNN. The Times of India
- ^ "The 2007 Shortlist". Dublin City Public Libraries/International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. 2007. http://www.impacdublinaward.ie/2007/shortlist.htm. Retrieved 5 April 2007.
- ^ "Salman Rushdie Collaborates With Booktrack And The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Booktrack Launches A New E-reader Platform". Booktrack. http://booktrack.serveronline.net/blog/?p=164. Retrieved 2/7/2012.
- ^ Rushdie's postcolonial influence[dead link]
- ^ Times of India Story on Rushdie's influence and awards Indiatimes.com
- ^ "Salman Rushdie to Teach and Place His Archive at Emory University". Emory University Office of Media Relations. http://news.emory.edu/Releases/RushdieProfessorship1160159900.html. Retrieved 6 December 2006.
- ^ "Rushdie visits Mumbai for 'Midnight's Children' film". Movies.indiatimes.com. 11 January 2010. http://movies.indiatimes.com/International/Rushdie-visits-Mumbai-for-Midnights-Children-film-/articleshow/5432895.cms. Retrieved 13 March 2010.
- ^ SUBHASH K JHA , 13 January 2010, 12.00 am IST (13 January 2010). "I'm a film buff: Rushdie". The Times of India. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/bollywood/news-interviews/Im-a-film-buff-Rushdie/articleshow/5436509.cms. Retrieved 13 March 2010.
- ^ "Dreaming of Midnight's Children". The Indian Express. 5 January 2010. http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Dreaming-of-Midnight-s-Children/563437/. Retrieved 13 March 2010.
- ^ "Irrfan moves from Mira Nair to Deepa Mehta". Hindustan Times. 20 January 2010. http://www.hindustantimes.com/Irrfan-moves-from-Mira-Nair-to-Deepa-Mehta/H1-Article1-499416.aspx. Retrieved 13 March 2010.
- ^ "Tête-à-tête with Deepa Mehta". Hindustan Times. 4 January 2010. http://www.hindustantimes.com/interviewscinema/T-te-t-te-with-Deepa-Mehta/493632/H1-Article1-493584.aspx. Retrieved 13 March 2010.
- ^ Thorpe, Vanessa (12 June 2011). "Salman Rushdie says TV drama series have taken the place of novels". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/12/salman-rushdie-write-tv-drama. Retrieved 11 June 2011.
- ^ The Lunchbox Fund homepage
- ^ Secular Coalition for America Advisory Board Biography
- ^ http://www.ralston.ac
- ^ "Salman Rushdie makes friends with Facebook". RTÉ News. 15 November 2011. http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/1115/rushdies_facebook.html. Retrieved 15 November 2011.
- ^ "Salman Rushdie claims victory in Facebook name battle". BBC News. 15 November 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15733026. Retrieved 15 November 2011.
- ^ U2 (July 2010). "Stairway to Devon − OK, Somerset!". Q: p. 101.
- ^ a b Anthony Loyd (8 June 2005). "Tomb of the unknown assassin reveals mission to kill Rushdie". The Times (London). http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article531110.ece.
- ^ "26 December 1990: Iranian leader upholds Rushdie fatwa". BBC News: On This Day. 26 December 1990. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/26/newsid_2542000/2542873.stm. Retrieved 10 October 2006.
- ^ Rubin, Michael (1 September 2006). "Can Iran Be Trusted?". The Middle East Forum: Promoting American Interests. http://www.meforum.org/article/1002. Retrieved 10 October 2006.
- ^ a b Webster, Philip, Ben Hoyle and Ramita Navai (20 January 2005). "Ayatollah revives the death fatwa on Salman Rushdie". The Times (London). http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article414681.ece. Retrieved 10 October 2006.
- ^ "Iran adamant over Rushdie fatwa". BBC News. 12 February 2005. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4260599.stm. Retrieved 10 October 2006.
- ^ "Rushdie's term". http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=2007021501382200.htm&date=2007/02/15/&prd=th&. Retrieved 15 February 2007.
- ^ "Cronenberg meets Rushdie". http://www.davidcronenberg.de/cr_rushd.htm.
- ^ "Rushdie anger at policeman's book". BBC. 2 August 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7538875.stm. Retrieved 4 January 2010.
- ^ "Bodyguard apologises to Rushdie". BBC. 26 August 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7581842.stm. Retrieved 4 January 2010.
- ^ Alison Flood (12 April 2012). "Salman Rushdie reveals details of fatwa memoir". The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/apr/12/salman-rushdie-reveals-fatwa-memoir. Retrieved 27 April 2012.
- ^ "Hezbollah: Rushdie death would stop Prophet insults". AFP. 2 February 2006. Archived from the original on 7 August 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20070807085216/http://www.natashatynes.com/newswire/2006/02/hezbollah_killi.html. Retrieved 26 April 2012.
- ^ James Phillips (20 June 2007). "Hezbollah's Terrorist Threat to the European Union – Testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Europe". http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/phi062007.htm.
- ^ Joseph Bernard Tamney (2002). The Resilience of Conservative Religion: The Case of Popular, Conservative Protestant Congregations. Cambridge, UK: The Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge.
- ^ a b c d "International Guerrillas and Criminal Libel". Screenonline. http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/460938/index.html. Retrieved 7 February 2008.
- ^ 2012 Speakers
- ^ Singh, Akhilesh Kumar (20 January 2012). "Salman Rushdie not to attend Jaipur Literature Festival". The Times of India. http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-01-20/india/30646521_1_jaipur-literature-festival-salman-rushdie-satanic-verses. Retrieved 20 January 2012.
- ^ "Salman Rushdie pulls out of Jaipur literature festival". BBC News. 20 January 2012. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-16644782. Retrieved 20 January 2012.
- ^ a b Singh, Akhilesh Kumar (24 January 2012). "Jaipur Literature Festival: Even a virtual Rushdie is unwelcome for Rajasthan govt". The Times of India. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/jaipur/Jaipur-Literature-Festival-Even-a-virtual-Rushdie-is-unwelcome-for-Rajasthan-govt/articleshow/11609354.cms. Retrieved 24 January 2012.
- ^ Singh, Akhilesh Kumar; Chowdhury, Shreya Roy (23 January 2012). "Salman Rushdie shadow on Jaipur Literature Festival: 4 authors who read from 'The Satanic Verses' sent packing". The Times of India. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/jaipur/Salman-Rushdie-shadow-on-Jaipur-Literature-Festival-4-authors-who-read-from-The-Satanic-Verses-sent-packing/articleshow/11595228.cms. Retrieved 23 January 2012.
- ^ [1], Rushdie video talk cancelled.
- ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-17349023
- ^ "15 June 2007 Rushdie knighted in honours list". BBC News. 15 June 2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6756149.stm. Retrieved 16 June 2007.
- ^ 'Sir Rubbish: Does Rushdie Deserve a Knighthood', Times Higher Educational Supplement, 20 June 2007
- ^ "10 July 2007 Al-Qaeda condemns Rushdie honour". BBC News. 10 July 2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6289110.stm. Retrieved 10 July 2007.
- ^ Rushdie: I was deranged when I embraced Islam | TimesOnline[dead link]
- ^ Muslims unite! A new Reformation will bring your faith into the modern era 11 August 2005
- ^ Michael Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder, Pluto Press, 2004, p60
- ^ "Letters, Salman Rushdie: No fondness for the Pentagon's politics | World news". The Guardian (London). 9 July 2007. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/jul/09/iraq.usa. Retrieved 13 March 2010.
- ^ StandWithUs.com – Dangerous Hypocrisy: World Reactions to the Danish Cartoons[dead link]
- ^ Wagner, Thomas (10 October 2006). "Blair, Rushdie support former British foreign secretary who ignited veil debate". SignOnSanDiego.com. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20061010-0539-britain-veildispute.html. Retrieved 10 October 2006.
- ^ The ageing punk of lit crit still knows how to spit – Times Online[dead link]
- ^ Radio show Medierna broadcast on Sveriges Radio P1 on 31 January 2009.
- ^ Salman Rushdie's statement on Amnesty International, The Sunday Times, 21 February 2010
- ^ "Salman Rushdie sets his sights on the 'Bollywood Jordan'", The Daily Mail, 12 June 2009
- ^ As Salman Rushdie steps out with another beautiful woman" 21 July 2008, The Evening Standard
- ^ "Rushdie: New book out from under shadow of fatwa", CNN, 15 April 1999. Retrieved 21 April 2007.
External links[link]
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Salman Rushdie |
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Salman Rushdie |
- Salman Rushdie official website
- Appearances on C-SPAN
- Salman Rushdie on Charlie Rose
- Salman Rushdie at the Internet Movie Database
- Article archive at Journalisted
- Works by or about Salman Rushdie in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- Salman Rushdie collected news and commentary at Al Jazeera English
- Salman Rushdie collected news and commentary at Dawn
- Salman Rushdie collected news and commentary at The Guardian
- Salman Rushdie collected news and commentary at The New York Times
- Contemporary writers: Salman Rushdie. British Council: Arts
- Jack Livings (Summer 2005). "Salman Rushdie, The Art of Fiction No. 186". The Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5531/the-art-of-fiction-no-186-salman-rushdie.
- New York Times special feature on Rushdie, 1999
- Critical Studies on Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children Indian Literature: A Critical Casebook
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Rushdie, Ahmed Salman |
| Alternative names | Rushdie, Ahmed Salman; سلمان رشدی (Urdu) |
| Short description | British-Indian novelist and author |
| Date of birth | 19 June 1947 |
| Place of birth | Mumbai, India |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
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