Salman Rushdie

Acclaimed, bestselling author Salman Rushdie is the recipient of the 2026 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, winner of the 1981 Booker Prize and named 2008's Best of the Booker for his extraordinary debut novel, Midnight's Children. He is the author of 23 books, including the novels Shame, The Satanic Verses, The Moor's Last Sigh, and Quichotte, all of which have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and the memoirs Joseph Anton, about his life in hiding under a fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini, and the National Book Award finalist Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, about the brutal attack that nearly took his life in 2022.