Salman Rushdie

Thursday, April 19
Craft talk — 4:15 p.m., Lecture Center 25, uptown campus (View PDF map)
Presentation/Q&A — 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, downtown campus
Free and open to the public. (view map)

After a 30-year postponement, the NYS Writers Institute welcomes Salman Rushdie for a presentation and Q&A at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 19 at Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, on the University at Albany downtown campus.

Earlier that same day at 4:15 p.m., Rushdie will hold a craft talk in Lecture Center 25 on the university’s uptown campus. Rushdie's 1981 novel, Midnight’s Children, received not only the Booker Prize, but also the 1993 "Booker of Bookers" and the 2008 "Best of the Booker," selected from all 41 winners since the prize’s inception in 1969.

Rushdie had been scheduled to visit the Writers Institute in 1989, but the appearance was cancelled due to the controversies surrounding his novel, The Satanic Verses. "We have long wanted to bring Salman Rushdie to UAlbany," said Director Paul Grondahl, "The Writers Institute’s persistence paid off. Rushdie is coming to campus after a 30-year hiatus."

Slideshow: The 1989 Salman Rushdie visit cancelled because of the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa.

Rushdie's new novel is The New York Times bestseller, The Golden House (2017), a parable of contemporary America set against the backdrop of current American culture and politics. The AP reviewer called it "a modern masterpiece... telling a story full of wonder and leaving you marveling at how it ever came out of the author’s head."

The Golden House received similar praise in a review in The Guardian: "From Nero to Obama, via The Godfather... The veteran novelist blends ancient history and myth with popular culture, crime caper and film techniques to fashion a morality tale for today."

Born in Bombay just two months before India and Pakistan gained their independence from the United Kingdom, Rushdie's work is primarily fictional but often grapples with difficult realities. Queen Elizabeth II knighted him for his services to literature in 2007 and a year later, The Times of London ranked him 13th on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.

Rushdie is the author of 13 novels; a book of stories, East, West; and four works of non-fiction, including Joseph Anton, an account of his life in the wake of the controversy over The Satanic Verses. He is the co-editor of Mirrorwork, an anthology of contemporary Indian writing, and of the 2008 Best American Short Stories anthology.

The program is cosponsored by the New York State Writers Institute and the UAlbany Speaker Series.

For additional information, contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620.