After Dinner Speakers: Salman Rushdie, Vin Diesel, Cherie Blair

Salman Rushdie is one of the world's most respected writers. In both fiction and non-fiction, Rushdie uses his unique upbringing and personal history to make bold statements about life on earth. His 1989 book The Satanic Verses, was a huge popular and critical success. Rushdie's most recent book is Step Across This Line: Collected Non-fiction, 1992-2002. Among other topics, the pieces in this collection explore the reaction of the media, various governments, and the writer himself to what he calls the "unfunny Valentine" he received on February 14, 1989, from the Ayatollah Khomeini: the fatwa calling for his death. It was while living under constant threat of violence that Rushdie produced some of the most sincere and beautiful work. The Moor's Last Sigh and Midnight's Children were especially well received, as were his frequent essays on intellectual freedom. The government of Iran lifted the fatwa in 1998. A prominent lecturer as well as writer, Rushdie has been a guest of some of the world's finest educational institutions. He has spoken at Yale, Harvard, and Oxford among others, and is an honorary professor of the Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.