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Salman Rushdie

Though an acclaimed and prize-winning novelist for nearly three decades, Sir Salman Rushdie's work was overshadowed in popular culture by a death sentence issued by the Iranian government in 1989 following the publication of his book The Satanic Verses (1988). The novel, which made suppositions about several passages deleted from the Koran, was met with outrage by members of the Muslim world, which forced Rushdie into hiding for nearly a decade. Though the edict was never formally lifted, he eventually emerged from seclusion at the end of the 1990s to resume his celebrated career with such novels as The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999) and Shalimar the Clown (2005), as well as Joseph Anton: A Memoir (2012), which recounted his life under the Iranian decree. Rushdie's literary accomplishments, as well as the travails he endured in the pursuit of his career, made him one of the late 20th century's best-known figures in popular culture.