literature
Book trade peace prize for Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie at the beginning of the award ceremony for the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in the Paulskirche in front of his wife Rachel Eliza Griffiths. photo
© Arne Dedert/dpa
The fatwa did not break him: the writer Salman Rushdie is celebrated and honored in Frankfurt’s Paulskirche.
For the writer Daniel Kehlmann Salman Rushdie “perhaps the most important defender of freedom of art and speech in our time.” Kehlmann (“Measuring the World”) gave the eulogy for the British-Indian writer, who was awarded the German book trade’s Peace Prize, on Sunday in Frankfurt’s Paulskirche.
Rushdie was not only undisputedly a great storyteller, said Kehlmann, but also “a wise, curious, cheerful and kind person and therefore the most worthy recipient that there could have been for this award (…)”. The fatwa imposed against him in 1989 could not destroy him. “How confidently Salman Rushdie dealt with a situation that would have emotionally crushed other people takes your breath away.”
In return for his personal protection, he was expected “to retreat to a hidden place and not let anyone hear about him,” said Kehlmann. “But Salman didn’t play along. He remained visible, remained present, remained, above all, a writer.” Instead of retreating so that everyone could have peace again, he became “the most famous invisible man in the world.”
The Peace Prize is endowed with 25,000 euros and is considered one of the most important literary awards in the country. Rushdie receives the prize “for his indomitability, his affirmation of life and for enriching the world with his joy of storytelling.”
Rushdie became famous with his 1981 masterpiece “Midnight Children.” In 1989, the then Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini called for the author’s murder because of Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses.” Rushdie has been blind in one eye since a knife attack in the USA in 2022.