Nationality 1: Indian

Birthdate: 1947

Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay, India, on June 19, 1947, just two months before the protagonist of Midnight's Children, whose birth coincides with the moment India receives its independence. He attended school in Bombay and in Rugby, England. At Cambridge, he joined the Cambridge Footlights theater company. After graduation, he lived with his family, which had moved to Pakistan in 1964, then he returned to England and worked for an advertising agency. In 1975 he published his first novel, Grimus, about a Native American who receives the gift of immortality. In 1976, he married Clarissa Luward, the first of four marriages.

Midnight's Children was published in 1981 and was an instant literary success, garnering the prestigious Booker Prize for Fiction, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction), an Arts Council Writers' Award and the English-Speaking Union Award. The book established Rushdie's international reputation. His next book, Shame...