By Nehru Odeh
Celebrated novelist Salman Rushdie is to receive the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, one of the country’s most prestigious lifetime literary honours.
The 79-year-old author will receive the medal at the 77th National Book Awards ceremony on November 18 in New York City, where author Kiran Desai, a longtime friend and fellow Indian-born writer, is expected to present the honour. Rushdie becomes the 39th recipient of the medal and only the fourth recipient born outside the United States.
The National Book Foundation said the award recognises Rushdie’s extraordinary contribution to American literature and the breadth of a career that has stretched across more than five decades.
“Salman Rushdie’s sweeping body of work is a celebration of literature’s power to shape narratives, build bridges and form connections beyond borders, generations and identities,” National Book Foundation executive director Ruth Dickey said.
She added that Rushdie’s novels and short-story collections, set across real and imagined landscapes, give readers access to culturally, politically and geographically varied worlds through writing marked by specificity and honesty.
For Rushdie, the award carries a particular significance because he became a United States citizen about a decade ago after spending much of his life between South Asia, Britain and America.
“Although I lived here for many, many years before I became a citizen and had a green card, citizenship suddenly made me feel a sense of being part of it that was deeper than before. And I think there’s something similar about this,” Rushdie said in a recent interview.
He described himself as an immigrant writer who first found his literary identity in England and now considers himself an immigrant writer in America.
“American writers come from everywhere,” he said, pointing to the diverse immigrant traditions that have enriched American literature.
Born in Bombay, now Mumbai, Rushdie moved to Britain as a teenager. He later became one of the most influential and controversial writers of his generation, producing more than 20 books and building a literary reputation around history, migration, identity, politics, religion, and the complexities of multicultural societies.
His 1981 novel, “Midnight’s Children”, won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker and is widely regarded as a defining novel of postcolonial India. The National Book Foundation lists 15 novels among his major works, including “Midnight’s Children”, “Shame”, “The Satanic Verses”, “The Moor’s Last Sigh” and “Quichotte”. His books have been translated into more than 40 languages.
But Rushdie’s literary career has also been inseparable from the question of freedom of expression. The publication of “The Satanic Verses” in 1988 provoked widespread protests in parts of the Muslim world and led Iran’s then Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to issue a fatwa calling for the author’s death. Rushdie spent years under heightened security and in hiding as a result.
Decades later, in August 2022, he was attacked on stage at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York while preparing to give a lecture on the United States as a sanctuary for writers and artists in exile.
Rushdie survived the stabbing but suffered severe injuries, including the loss of sight in his right eye and damage to his right hand. The attack became the subject of his 2024 memoir, “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder”, which was a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award for Nonfiction.
The memoir has also inspired Alex Gibney’s documentary, “Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie”, which is scheduled for theatrical release in the United States on September 17. The film draws on Rushdie’s memoir and previously unseen footage recorded by his wife, poet and novelist Rachel Eliza Griffiths, documenting his recovery after the attack.
Ironically, “Knife” marked Rushdie’s first competitive National Book Award nomination. His earlier major works, including “Midnight’s Children”, were published before he became eligible for the American prize.
Rushdie has also played a significant role in the literary community beyond his own writing. He served as president of PEN America from 2004 to 2006 and helped establish the PEN World Voices Festival in 2005. His honours include the Booker Prize, Whitbread Book Award for Best Novel and PEN Centenary Courage Award.
The National Book Foundation describes the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters as an honour for individuals who have made an exceptional impact on the country’s literary heritage. Created in 1988, it recognises a lifetime of literary achievement and comes with a $10,000 prize and a solid brass medal.
Previous recipients include Toni Morrison, Stephen King, Philip Roth, John Updike, Maya Angelou, Ursula K. Le Guin, Isabel Allende, Art Spiegelman and George Saunders, who received the medal in 2025.
Rushdie said that when he thinks about his literary legacy, he is less concerned with monuments or accolades than with the books he leaves behind. He recalled his late friend and fellow novelist Martin Amis and said he would like his legacy to be, quite simply, a shelf of books bearing his name.
For a writer whose life and work have crossed continents, cultures and ideological fault lines, the National Book Foundation’s decision places Rushdie firmly within the American literary tradition he has increasingly come to call his own.
The 77th National Book Awards ceremony will take place at Cipriani Wall Street in Manhattan on November 18. The Foundation will also honour paediatrician and literacy activist Perri Klass with the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community.
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