Indian-born British writer, award-winning and prolific writer known for threats he has received in the past from Islamic fanatics. Here is how one could describe, if limited to a summary of a few words, a 75-year-old Salman Rushdiewho was attacked with a knife during an event in New York today.

Since the release of the booksatanic versesFor the past few years, Salman Rushdie is said to have roamed New York unprotected despite the threats he had received in the past about his life, perhaps thinking that these threats are already … forgotten.

Rushdie was born in Bombay in the 1940s but has lived permanently in England since the 1960s. He studied history at the University of Cambridge, worked as an actor and copywriter, and then, in the mid-1970s, published his first book, which, however, went unnoticed. Rushdie’s success begins in the early 1980s and beyond with the Booker Prize-winning book Midnight’s Children.

However, the book from which most people remember Salman Rushdie came out in the fall of 1988 under the titlesatanic verses“. The reason for the novel, which, however, had references to the prophet Muhammad and the Koran.

The publication of The Satanic Verses has sparked a backlash among Muslims who denounce the book as “blasphemous” and burn copies of it. Many countries prohibit its distribution, including India and Pakistan.

Going even further, Iran’s religious leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Mousavi Khomeini, issues a fatfa in 1989 in favor of assassinating the “blasphemous” Salman Rushdie, who is thus proclaimed in the eyes of Muslims as their new favorite enemy and flees.

It should be noted that his persecutors, following the orders of Khomeini, persecuted not only the author himself, but also those who were involved in the publication of The Satanic Verses around the world, thus indulging in a witch hunt that was supposed to leave after himself quite a lot affected.

In this regard, in Tokyo in 1991, the Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi was killed, and the Norwegian publisher William Nygaard (in Oslo in 1993) and the Italian translator Ettore Capriolo (in 1991 in Milan) were seriously injured. In June 1993, 37 people were killed and more than 50 injured in Sebastiao, Turkey, when fanatical Sunni Islamists set fire to a hotel that was hosting Aziz Nesin, a Turkish translator of The Satanic Verses, and many Alevi residents.

As for Rushdie himself, he lives out of the public eye, under the protection of the British police.

It is noted that his case was enough to cause a diplomatic rift between London and Tehran, as well as attacks by protesters on the British embassy in the Iranian capital.

However, since the late 1990s, Rushdie’s life begins to gradually return to … normal rhythms. Khomeini, meanwhile, has died (already since 1989), and the Iranian authorities, under the weight of international pressure, are calling for the abolition of the fatfa on the murder of a British writer of Indian origin.

Despite his adventures, Rushdie never stops writing, and in 2007 he was knighted by the Queen of England for his contributions to literature. Meanwhile, he managed to marry a total of four times, having two children.