It is always interesting to experience the reception of a book because readers often notice something very different from what the author originally imagined, Rushdie said. He noted that Shalimar the Clown had been written as a story about love and revenge, but many readers interpreted it as a story about terrorism.
Rushdie arrived in Budapest to launch a new series of his books in Hungarian by publishers Ulpius Ház. The series was launched with reprints of the books Midnight's Children, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Shame and The Moor's Last Sigh as well as the first Hungarian edition of Shalimar the Clown.
Rushdie said his family was originally from Kashmir, which plays a big role in Shalimar the Clown, so its spirit can be felt in the book, but what inspired him to write the story was shooting a documentary film there and meeting the locals.
Rusdie was born into a rich Muslim family in Bombay in 1947. He went to the UK for university, attending his father's alma mater Cambridge. Rushdie worked for advertising companies before becoming a full-time writer.
Rushdie's first novel, Grimus, the title of which is an anagram of Simurg, the mythical Persian bird, was published in 1975. But it was not until the publication of his second novel, Midnight's Children, in 1981, that he was placed in the literary spotlight. The book won the Booker Prize and shaped the course of Indian writing in English for the entire decade.
After the success of Midnight's Children, about the birth of the modern nation of India, Rushdie wrote Shame (1983), in which he depicted the political turmoil in Pakistan.
In his later works, Rushdie turned towards the Western world. In the 1980s, he visited Nicaragua and transcribed his experiences into The Jaguar Smile (1987).
The publication of The Satanic Verses in September 1988 caused immediate controversy in the Muslim world because of what was perceived to be an irreverent depiction of the prophet Muhammad in the book. In February 1989, the Ayatollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of Iran at the time, issued a fatwa, or a bounty, on Rushdie's head. As a result, Rushdie was forced to live under police protection for years to come.
Rushdie followed The Satanic Verses with Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990) and East, West (1994). The Moor's Last Sigh (1995), explored commercial and cultural links between India and Spain, and The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999), presented an alternative history of modern rock music. Shalimar the Clown, which he wrote in 2005, received, in India, the prestigious Crossword Fiction Award, and was, in Britain, a finalist for the Whitbread Book Awards.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
