Indian-born author Salman Rushdie, who is due to release a new book Luka and the Fire of Life, has courted controversy yet again by describing the British monarchy and its traditions as “archaic ... stupid ... a British oddity.”
Explaining his reason for accepting the knighthood, Sir Salman told the Sunday Times that he had received an honour from the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France. “It would be extraordinary to accept something from the French state and then refuse something from my own country,” said the writer, who is a British citizen.
The kinghood ceremony, according to the Booker Prize winner, was a bit ridiculous, “all structured around this furious archaic thing of queens and knights, all a bit stupid, but it’s what we do. You take it for the spirit of it, which is to be complimentary about your work. And I think, thanks. Ian McKellen got something, I got something, who cares? We got our medals and left.”
Sir Salman was knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in June 2007, and at the time had said that he was “thrilled and humbled” by the knighthood.
Rushdie, who spent many years in hiding after his novel The Satanic Verses, published in 1989, provoked violent reactions and an Iranian fatwa calling for his death, said he has observed an intolerance where “to disagree with someone is to offend them.”
The Mumbai-born author, who mainly divides his time between the United States and Britain, said: “There’s an attitude of shut up, don’t make trouble. In India, the main problem is Hindu intolerance, and in America, there’s Christian intolerance. If you listen to [political commentator] Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, you see that manifest. If you wanted a definition of the American Taliban, there it is.”
“But it’s not just one religion: I mean all kinds of fundamentalism. We live in an increasingly intolerant time and one of the things that is worrying is the liberal cravenness in the face of that, almost a willingness to accept censorship as a good thing because all you have to do now is threaten violence and it’s become very easy to blame the target,” the 63-year-old writer said.
He is not too worried about Muslim opinion of his writings. “Who cares? I’m sure some of them still think I’m a complete bastard, and I’m not fond of them either,” he said.
Sir Salman, who split from his fourth wife Padma Lakshmi in 2007, has two sons Zafar, 31, and 13-year-old Milan. He wrote the latest book, a children’s story for Milan, who demanded his own book as Sir Salman had written Haroun and the Sea of Stories for Zafar in 1990. “Milan wanted a book of his own,” he said.
He denied the speculation that the beautiful witch in his last book, The Enchantress of Florence, was based on Padma Lakshmi. “Actually, I wasn’t thinking about Padma... and I wouldn’t pay her the compliment.”
Sir Salman, who won Booker and Booker of the Bookers for Midnight’s Children, admitted that he finds writing “pretty boring, like an office job, just a day’s work, although I know (his friend) Martin (Amis) gets up early in the morning and finishes by lunch.”
Recalling his first book, a science-fiction fantasy, called Grimus, Sir Salman said it was “cringe-making.”
“Well, I was 26 when I wrote it, but that doesn’t excuse me, because Martin was 24 [when he wrote The Rachel Papers].”.
Rushdie, who is very close to his sisters, credits them for his love of the company of women. He was very saddened by the sudden death of his youngest sister three years ago, an event he says was “shattering. I still say I have three sisters.”