Behold, dear reader: June 19, 1947, the birthday of a true literary badass, Salman Rushdie, whose audacious prose – most electrifyingly The Satanic Verses – ignites global tempests and even a fatwa with its unapologetic defiance and razor-sharp storytelling.  Today we raise a glass to a titan who dances on the edge of controversy, weaving narratives that slash through the mundane with fearless brilliance.

Let’s take a minute to dive into the firestorm: that 1989 fatwa (I remember it well), a death sentence from Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, branded Rushdie a heretic for daring to blend sacred myth with profane imagination.  This was not long after the Pope had forbidden Catholics from seeing “The Last Temptation of Christ,” and as a fledgling writer, the notion that one could potentially write something so potent that it would be labeled verboten, even worthy of a death sentence by heads of state and religious leaders made the whole thing that much more appealing.  The fatwa was a global hunt, a shadow over his every step, yet this badass refused to cower.  Decades of exile, guarded existence, and relentless threats couldn’t muzzle him – he kept writing, kept provoking, kept living loud.

They almost got him on August 12, 2022: a knife attack in New York that stole his right eye, a brutal scar on his unyielding spirit.  Doctors fought to save him, and though the blade took his sight, it didn’t touch his badass soul.  With one eye and infinite grit, he rose again, pen in hand, declaring in his memoir Knife that silence is the enemy’s victory.  Fuck yes.  This man, now 78, stands unbroken, a testament to resilience.  Cheers to you, Salman, the unbreakable.

N.P.: “The God That Failed” – Imelda May