![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/p0mj004r.jpg\")
<\/p>\n4. He turned into a ‘thief’ for a newspaper story<\/p>\n
At Cambridge University, Salman wrote for the student paper, reporting on a spate of thefts from student rooms. Wanting to emulate the journalists he admired, he decided: \u201cBe the thief. So, I chose half a dozen staircases, knocked on doors, and if nobody answered, I saw if the door was unlocked. If it was, I went in and made a list of what I could steal.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n Sir Salman Rushdie in the Desert Island Discs Studios\n <\/p>\n
I needed to feel optimistic myself. And I have to say the book written in maybe the darkest moment of my life has been one of the most joyful experiences in terms of its life in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sir Salman Rushdie on writing Haroun and the Sea of Stories<\/p>\n
Although he never actually stole anything, unfortunately for Salman, one of the unlocked rooms belonged to the editor of the paper. \u201cIt had a lot of very expensive stuff. To his credit, he ran the article. But he never hired me again.\u201d<\/p>\n
5. Literary success was not immediate<\/p>\n
It took 13 years for Salman to become established as a successful author. After graduating from Cambridge in 1968, he worked in advertising. His first book, Grimus, was published in 1975 and had \u201ca poor reception \u2013 to put it mildly\u201d.<\/p>\n
But in 1981 came Midnight\u2019s Children, which won the Booker Prize and has since been voted the best novel of all Booker winners. His fortieth birthday party in 1987 felt like a climax, and he picks Whitney Houston\u2019s I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me) as his fifth disc to remind him of that celebration. \u201cI\u2019d had a very good decade. I didn\u2019t realise that 1988 was going to descend like a hammer.\u201d<\/p>\n
6. His next book changed everything<\/p>\n
After The Satanic Verses was published in 1988, a fatwa calling for Salman\u2019s death was issued by the supreme leader of Iran. He hadn\u2019t expected the storm. \u201cIt was treated as if it was nonfiction. I thought probably some people might not care for it. But I thought, \u2018You don\u2019t have to read it.\u2019 That\u2019s why there are lots of books in bookstores. You can read the ones you like.\u201d<\/p>\n
Salman had to leave his home and was under security protection for a long time. \u201cIf you had told me on that day, listening to Whitney, \u2018Here’s what’s going to happen to you, how do you think you’ll handle it?\u2019 I would not have bet on myself to handle it well. I would never describe myself as tough, but some bit of me obviously is.\u201d<\/p>\n
7. A promise to his son saved him<\/p>\n
After being forced into hiding, he found his attitude to the situation changing. \u201cWhat, I\u2019m hiding behind the sofa?\u201d, he remembers thinking, \u201cthat\u2019s not very heroic. I think the thing that rescued me was work. I thought the only thing I can do is to go on being the writer that I’d always set out to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Besides, he\u2019d made a promise to his son to write a book that he\u2019d enjoy reading. \u201cIf you make a promise to a child, you should probably keep it. So, I wrote Haroun and the Sea of Stories.\u201d It’s a very optimistic book, he explains. \u201cI think maybe I needed to feel optimistic myself. And I have to say the book written in maybe the darkest moment of my life has been one of the most joyful experiences in terms of its life in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"4. He turned into a ‘thief’ for a newspaper story At Cambridge University, Salman wrote for the student…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":{"0":"post-301756","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}