Salman Rushdie Wins Peace Prize of the German Book Trade
This year’s Peace Prize of the German Book Trade goes to the Indian-British author Salman Rushdie. The 76-year-old will receive the prestigious award on October 22 in Frankfurt’s Paulskirche (St. Paul’s Church). In the English-speaking world, Salman Rushdie’s novels are published by the Penguin Random House publishers Random House and Jonathan Cape, and in Germany by Penguin.
The well-known Penguin Random House author Salman Rushdie is the winner of this year’s Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. The 76-year-old Indian-British writer, who was seriously injured in an assassination attempt in the summer of 2022, will receive the award on Oct. 22 in Frankfurt’s Paulskirche church. As the foundation’s board of trustees announced yesterday in Frankfurt am Main, Rushdie will receive the prestigious award “ for his indomitable spirit, for his affirmation of life and for enriching our world with his love of storytelling.” In his novels and non-fiction books, “ he melds narrative foresight with unfailing literary innovation, humor and wisdom.”
“I am deeply honored by, and grateful for this very important award. I can only thank the jury for its generosity,” Rushdie is quoted as saying in a Peace Prize of the German Book Trade press release. “I can only thank the jury for its generosity. I know how significant this prize is, and I’m a little overawed by the list of previous recipients, to whom my name will now be added. I’m truly delighted.”
Sir Salman Ahmed Rushdie, born on June 19, 1947 in Mumbai, India, is one of the most important writers of contemporary English literature. His novels, which have been translated into more than 40 languages, often combine magical realism with historical fiction. They deal with connections, migration, and ruptures between Eastern and Western civilizations and are often set on the Indian subcontinent. In addition to novels, Rushdie writes short stories, travelogues, essays, and journalistic pieces. In the English-speaking world, Salman Rushdie’s novels are published by the Penguin Random House publishers Random House and Jonathan Cape, and in Germany by Penguin.
“We are thrilled that Salman Rushdie has been awarded the 2023 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade,” says Britta Egetemeier, publisher of Penguin Verlag. “It honors a body of work and a writer whose universally human, humorous, virtuosically creative narrative power sweeps us up and away anew in each and every novel. To read Rushdie is to celebrate the festival of life in all its magic and wonder. At the same time, his books reflect our present day and the threats to the freedom of expression, that unconditional prerequisite of all freedom, Salman Rushdie’s lifelong theme.” Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe has been publishing Rushdie since the publication of his autobiography “Joseph Anton” in 2012 and now publishes his entire oeuvre in Germany.
"The fact that this mark of distinction by the German Publishers & Booksellers Association reaches him today, on his birthday, makes us particularly happy. We can wholeheartedly and with verve endorse the judges’ completely accurate reasoning.”
Rushdie has been persecuted by religious fanatics for decades. After the publication of his novel “The Satanic Verses” in 1988, he was sentenced to death in absentia in Iran for blasphemy. The Iranian revolutionary leader at the time, Ayatollah Khomeini, accused Rushdie of insulting Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran in his novel and declared a fatwa against him, calling on believers worldwide to kill the author. Rushdie’s famous book includes a character who resembles the Prophet Mohammed. As a result, Rushdie had to live underground and under police protection for years. Shortly before the publication of his latest novel, Victory City, he was seriously injured in a knife attack during a reading in New York state in August 2022. Despite massive physical and psychological consequences that Rushdie still wrestles with, the German Publishers and Booksellers Association (Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels) says in its statement, his writing continues to be “imaginative and deeply human.”
