Answers: The life and works of Salman Rushdie
This quiz marks the publication of Victory City in February 2023, Salman Rushdie’s latest novel, six months after he survived a stabbing attack.
Answers
1) Which was the first country to ban The Satanic Verses?
India in October 1988. More here, here, here and here. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued the ‘fatwa’ on February 14, 1989 soon after six people were killed during violent protests in Pakistan.
2) Rushdie’s 1995 novel The Moor’s Last Sigh managed to offend parties at different ends of India’s political divide. What was the name given to a bulldog in the book nicknamed ‘Jaw-Jaw’?
Jawaharlal. Jawaharlal Nehru was independent India’s first Prime Minister. More here.
3) The Moor’s Last Sigh also had a right-wing politician named Raman Fielding who heads a party called ‘Mumbai's Axis’. Who does Raman Fielding resemble?
Bal Thackeray, who founded the right-wing Shiv Sena in 1996. The Moor’s Last Sigh was published in 1995 just months after the Shiv Sea-BJP alliance came to power for the first time in India’s Maharashtra state. More here, here and here. The New Yorker profiles Bal Thackeray here.
4) What was filmed secretly in Sri Lanka in 2011 with President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s permission? An earlier attempt at a TV series by the BBC came to nought in 1997 when Sri Lanka withdrew permission after initially granting it.
Film adaptation of Midnight’s Children. More here, here, here and here. Director Deepa Mehta used a fake working title during the filming in Sri Lanka, something she had done earlier for Water, also filmed in Sri Lanka under the name River Moon. More about the Hindu right-wing protests in India that led to the first version of Water being abandoned here, here and here.
5) Before becoming a fulltime writer Salman Rushdie worked as an advertising copywriter. One of the slogans he coined is ‘Look into the Mirror tomorrow – you'll like what you see.' Ad for which organisation? (Hint in the slogan)
Daily Mirror tabloid newspaper. More here and here.
6) The 1990 film International Gorillay in Punjabi was a hit in Pakistan. The British Board of Film Classification refused to grant the film a certificate, saying its contents may amount to criminal libel. The film was finally released in the UK after Rushdie opposed a ban. He did however call the film a "a distorted, incompetent piece of trash" What was International Gorillay all about?
International Gorillay has ‘Salman Rushdie’ as the villain who is eventually killed. You can read about one of the most bizarre films ever made here, here, here and here. The Paperclip’s Twitter thread is also worth a read.
7) Which Rushdie novel is set in the world of rock music? A song in the novel was adapted and recorded by a prominent band. The song was used in a 2000 film and a promotional video featured Rushdie. Name the novel and the music band.
The Ground Beneath Her Feet. More here and here. The title is from a song crafted by the main protagonist in the novel, a rock star. Rushdie’s song written into the novel was adapted by U2 and was part of the soundtrack of the 2000 film The Million Dollar Hotel.
8) Rushdie appears as himself in which popular 2001 film based on a best-selling novel of the 1990s (not written by Rushdie)?
Bridget Jones’s Diary written by Helen Fielding. More on Rushdie’s cameos here, here, here and here.
9) Rushdie wrote the memoir Joseph Anton about his time in hiding under police protection. He had been asked to take up an assumed name and he chose the first names of two of his favourite authors. Name the two authors.
Anton Chekov and Joseph Conrad. More here, here, here and here. An excerpt from Joseph Anton in the New Yorker here.
10) Multiple characters in Rushdie’s 1983 novel Shame resemble real-life political figures. Who are Iskander Harappa and his daughter Arjumand Harappa modelled on?
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto, former Prime Ministers of Pakistan. More here, here, here and here.
11) Rushdie’s novel Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights depicts a fictional debate about reason and God between two prominent philosophers of the 12th century. Name the duo (both in real life were on opposing ends of a major debate and their works had wide-ranging impact)
Ibn Rushd and Al Ghazali. Ibn Rushd tried to establish that reason and philosophical enquiry were compatible with God and faith, while Al Ghazali placed revelation as found in the Quran above reason. The Incoherence of the Philosophers is a landmark work of Al Ghazali. Ibn Rushd countered it with The Incoherence of the Incoherence, defending the use of Aristotelian philosophy within Islamic thought. Ibn Rushd was persecuted and exiled, only for his work to become foundational for post-classical European thought. More from the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy here.
Al Ghazali’s ‘approach to resolving apparent contradictions between reason and revelation was accepted by almost all later Muslim theologians’ as the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy points out here. A nuanced look at the Ibn Rushd-Al Ghazali clash in the context of Salman Rushdie’s book here.
Ursula K. Le Guin reviews Rushdie’s book here. An excerpt from the book published in the New Yorker here. The number of nights in the title Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights corresponds to 1,001, the number of days spent by Scheherazade narrating stories to avoid execution.
Another notable trivia about Salman Rushdie and Ibn Rushd is the author’s surname. Rushdie’s father had changed his surname from Dehlvi to Rushdie, inspired by the philosopher’s pursuit of reason. More here and here.
12) Which Rushdie novel is a contemporary reworking of an acclaimed 17th century Spanish novel?
Quichotte, inspired by Don Quixote. More here, here, here and here.
13) In 1984 Salman Rushdie wrote an essay for Granta titled Outside the Whale. He posited that literature is intertwined with history and politics and the writer cannot be insulated. Rushdie was countering an essay published in 1940 titled Inside the Whale. The author argued that writers who seek to reflect the world without aiming to change it through explicit political messaging are far more effective and enduring. Who wrote Inside the Whale? (Hint in the first line of the question)
George Orwell. You can read Inside the Whale here. Ian McEwan on Orwell and Inside the Whale here.
Salman Rushdie’s Outside the Whale here.
14) Rushdie’s first full-length non-fiction book was the travelogue The Jaguar Smile published in 1987. Which country, at the time a major theatre of the Cold War, was the book all about?
Nicaragua. Rushdie visited Nicaragua as a guest of the Sandinista Association of Cultural Workers and wrote a sympathetic account of the movement led by President Daniel Ortega, who was fighting off U.S. attempts to oust him. More here, here and here. Ortega lost in a democratic vote in 1990 as the Cold War was winding down, only to be elected to power two decades later. Since then he has increasingly clamped down on political opposition.
In 2021 Rushdie wrote ‘In 1986 I believed that the greatest threat to a free Nicaragua was the United States’ economic blockade and support of the “Contra” counter-revolutionaries. Now it has become clear that the country’s greatest enemies lay within.’
15) Which political leader sued Rushdie over a sentence in Midnight’s Children? She wanted that sentence removed in future editions of the book. Rushdie had presented the sentence as a rumour and had earlier told the publisher this was the only sentence in the book he could not justify. In his words, “ it is about three people: two of them are dead and the third is the one who would be suing you.” He agreed to take that sentence out but then the political leader died. Who?
Indira Gandhi. More here and here. An unpublished early book of Rushdie was Madame Rama, which had Indira Gandhi as a key character and took potshots at her for cracking down on political opposition and curbing civil liberties by imposing an Emergency from 1975-77.
16) Victory City is a fictional portrait of the medieval Vijayanagara Empire of southern India. Another renowned author and Nobel laureate often referred to Vijayanagara. In the opening sequence of his 1975 non-fiction book he mourns the end of what he describes as a "great centre of Hindu civilisation". Who?
V.S. Naipaul in India: A Wounded Civilization. More here, here and here.