Frankfurt/Main (dpa) – The British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie will be awarded this year’s Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. The 76-year-old, who was seriously injured in an attempted assassination last summer, will be presented with the award this autumn during the Frankfurt Book Fair. The Indian-born author is to be honoured “for his indomitable spirit, for his affirmation of life and for enriching our world with his love of storytelling,” the Board of Trustees announced in Frankfurt am Main on Monday.
Rushdie was stabbed and seriously injured during a lecture he was giving in the USA last summer. Ever since, he has been blind in one eye. The attack came more than 30 years after the former revolutionary leader in Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, had issued a fatwa against Rushdie in 1989, calling for the author to be murdered for his novel “The Satanic Verses”.
The author has since lived under serious and constant threat to his life. “And yet he remains a passionate defender of freedom of thought and expression – just as equally for himself as for those whose views he does not share,” reads the jury statement. The Peace Prize honours individuals who have contributed to turning the idea of peace into reality through literature, science or art. Last year the Ukrainian author Serhij Zhadan won the award.
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