Sir Salman Rushdie, award-winning and at times controversial novelist and essayist, was featured Nov. 7 at the second fall speaker series event held at Bergen Community College (BCC).
Interviewed in front of a crowd of about 500 by BCC President Dr. G. Jeremiah Ryan, Rushdie answered questions submitted by teachers and students regarding his literature, current social and political issues, and his personal experiences as a public figure.
After being introduced, Rushdie explained that he wanted to read an excerpt from his 1981 novel, "Midnight’s Children," a novel that brought him success and notoriety after he captured the Booker Prize.
At midnight on Aug. 15, 1947, India proclaimed itself independent from Great Britain, and in the novel, 1,001 children are born with supernatural powers. Two of those children are switched at birth, an illegitimate son of a poor Hindu woman and the son of a wealthy Muslim family.
The book follows the lives of the two boys for 30 years, and the setting mirrors the social, cultural and political changes that took place during this historic time.
Before Rushdie began the reading, he informed the crowd that his status as a British Knight, awarded to him by Queen Elizabeth II in 2007 for his services to literature, was not what he expected.
"This knight business is a little overrated," he said. "There’s no armor. There’s no horse."
During the interview portion, Ryan asked Rushdie what he thinks people can learn from literature that cannot be learned from other areas of study. The author’s response, "everything."
"One of the things literature has done, and also should do, is ask the difficult questions," he added.
Rushdie himself has brought both difficult questions and contentious topics to the public discourse, most famously so in his Whitbred Prize winning 1989 novel, "The Satanic Verses."
The book opens with the explosion of a hijacked jetliner over the English Channel and continues to evoke scenes based on the life of the Prophet Mohammed.
According to biography.com, the novel "was denounced as blasphemous by outraged Muslim leaders." Iran’s Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini enacted a fatwa, a religious ruling or as Rushdie called it, an edict, against the author. This partiular edict put Rushdie’s life in danger, causing him to go into hiding until 1998.
Rushdie said due to the elections held in Iran during the 1990s, and the elections of President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, political leaders were able to work together in order to get the fatwa withdrawn about 11 years ago.
"Things went back to normal pretty quickly after that," Rushdie said.
Ryan asked Rushdie, who currently resides in Manhattan, his thoughts on the recent election of President-elect Barack Obama.
"From my perspective, it’s a joyful event," Rushdie said. "I’ve never seen young people in this country so energized the way they were in the period leading up to the election."
He explained that he felt the social and cultural implications of Obama’s presidency will be enormous, whether or not the new president can meet all of the goals that were promised during the campaign.
"I have a feeling that the world has changed, like that. Like a switch has been thrown," said Rushdie. "This is a vanguard moment for the whole western world."
According to biography.com, Rushdie was born in 1947 in Bombay, India. He attended the University of Cambridge. Other books by the author include "The Enchantress of Florence" (2008), "Fury" (2001), and "The Moor’s Last Sigh" (1995).
