Rushdie to speak at Byham

Salman Rushdie

Sept. 14, 7:30 p.m.

Byham Theater

101 6th Ave.

(412) 456-6666

$20 – $32… Salman Rushdie

Sept. 14, 7:30 p.m.

Byham Theater

101 6th Ave.

(412) 456-6666

$20 – $32

Though thankfully he doesn’t have to live in hiding for fear of being killed any longer, essayist and novelist Salman Rushdie, who will be giving a reading at the Byham Theater tonight, is still one of the more controversial writers of our time, and manages to be so without detailing graphic descriptions of violence or self-mutilation (I’m looking at you, Bret Easton Ellis and Chuck Palahniuk!).

Tonight at the Byham Theater Downtown, Rushdie will both read from his extensive body of work and talk about his thoughts on politics and life in general. Although it’s being advertised in a somewhat hokey way as being “a tour de force of ideas and intellectual pyrotechnics on a grand scale,” Rushdie is one of the first of an important group of Indian writers working in English, and his appearance here in Pittsburgh is not to be missed.

As one of the first Indian writers working in English to gain international notoriety, Rushdie’s second and perhaps best novel, “Midnight’s Children,” is in many ways the foundation upon which the writing of other Indian writers like Vikram Seth (“A Suitable Boy,” “An Equal Music”) and Arundhati Roy (“The God of Small Things”) rests. It won not only the Booker Prize, but in 1993 was awarded the ‘Booker of Bookers’ Prize, meaning that it was chosen as the best novel to have been awarded the Booker Prize in its first 25 years. Rather than continue to list the litany of awards Rushdie has received, let’s just say that the man can write.

The novel that created the controversy that continues to follow Rushdie and made his name familiar even to those who have never read his work is “The Satanic Verses,” which is based in part upon contested material that may at one point have been part of the Koran and concerns the life of Muhammad. Upon its publication in 1989, it was banned in India and the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa on Rushdie.

A fatwa is sort of like the religious version of bounty. In issuing a fatwa, the leader of Iran decreed that any and all Muslims had a duty to kill Rushdie. Partly because of this, Rushdie has never returned to Bombay to live, although he grew up there.

A British citizen, he was educated at King’s College at Cambridge University like so many other famous writers and intellectuals (Zadie Smith, author of “White Teeth” and “The Autograph Man,” to name a recent alumnus also writing about the relationship between east and west) and has continued to live in the West, although his writing has always concerned India and the way Indian culture and religion relate to and clash with both Western culture and Islam.

Like many of his novels, “The Satanic Verses” explores the story of Indian expatriates in England returning to India. It also features elements of magical realism, the literary style most commonly associated with Rushdie’s fiction writing, and is heavily influenced by Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita.”

Other well-known novels by Rushdie include “The Ground Beneath Her Feet,” which explores the influence American rock ‘n’ roll has had on India, “The Moor’s Last Sigh” and “Shame.”

Rushdie uses magical realism and often-fantastical plots to explore political issues. In “Midnight’s Children,” magical realism is a vehicle for exploring the problems India has experienced since gaining its independence and its relations with Pakistan (a set of themes that many other Indian writers have followed his lead in using, and with good reason). In his latest novel, “Shalimar the Clown” he uses the absurd-sounding story of a clown who becomes a terrorist to explore both terrorism and his views on U.S. foreign policy.