Salman Rushdie has made a rare public speech in which he warned of ongoing attacks against freedom of expresssion in the west, nine months after being injured by an assailant onstage.
The Indian-born British-American novelist made his remarks in a video address at the British Book Awards, where he was being honoured with the Freedom to Publish prize.
The award is given to writers, publishers or booksellers who make an exceptional stand for freedom of expression, “despite the ongoing threats they face”.
Rushdie, 75, spent years in hiding with police protection after Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, in 1989 calling for his death over the alleged blasphemy in his novel The Satanic Verses.
In August last year, he was blinded in one eye and suffered nerve damage to his hand when he was attacked on stage at a literary festival in New York state.
His alleged assailant, Hadi Matar, has pleaded not guilty to charges of assault and attempted murder.
In his speech, delivered on Monday 15 May, Rushdie warned that freedom of expression in the under its most severe threat in his lifetime.
“We live in a moment, I think, at which freedom of expression, freedom to publish has not in my lifetime been under such threat in the countries of the west,” he said.
“Now I am sitting here in the US, I have to look at the extraordinary attack on libraries, and books for children in schools. The attack on the idea of libraries themselves. It is quite remarkably alarming, and we need to be very aware of it, and to fight against it very hard.”
Rushdie also criticised publishers who change decades-old books for modern sensibilities, such as large-scale cuts and rewrites to the works of children’s author Roald Dahl and James Bond creator Ian Fleming.
Puffin UK recently did a u-turn on its censorship of children’s books by Dahl, which saw words such as “fat” removed and other passages rewritten to remove language the publisher deemed to be offensive.
After an extroardinary intervention by Queen Camilla, then Queen Consort, however, Puffin UK said it would publish both the censored and uncensored editions.
Rushdie said that attempts by publishers to make Fleming’s books more politically correct was “almost comical”.
“I have to say it has been alarming to see publishers looking to bowdlerise the work of such people as Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming,” he said.
“The idea that James Bond could be made politically correct is almost comical. I think that has to be resisted. Books have to come to us from their time and be of their time, and if that’s difficult to take, don’t read them. Read another book, but don’t try and remake yesterday’s work in the light of today’s attitudes.”
Additional reporting from agencies
