Salman Rushdie Receives Iceland’s Halldór Laxness International Literary Prize
- This marks the fourth time this highly regarded prize has been bestowed, celebrating the novelist’s exceptional contributions to world literature.
Novelist Salman Rushdie was awarded the Halldór Laxness International Literary Prize at a ceremony at Háskólabíó in Reykjavík last week. Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson presented award, which is a monetary award in the amount of 15,000 euros with prize money in addition. The award ceremony, held on Sept. 13, marks the fourth time this highly regarded prize has been bestowed, “celebrating Rushdie’s exceptional contributions to world literature,” a press release said.
“I’ve been meaning to come to Iceland for a long time, so I’m glad I finally made it and I’ve had a great time here. Thank you to everyone who has welcomed me,” Rushdie said after receiving the prize. The hard ceremony was followed by a discussion with Rushdie, musician Halla Oddný Magnúsdóttir and author Halldór Guðmundsson. Reflecting on the honor he said he knows that “Halldór Laxness was a prodigious writer and have been checking out some of his work and learning, too, about his extraordinary life.”
Since its inception, the Halldór Laxness International Literary Prize has honored some of the world’s most illustrious writers, that is Ian McEwan (2019), Elif Shafak (2021), and Andrey Kurkov (2022). The prize was established to perpetuate the legacy of Halldór Laxness, Iceland’s Nobel Laureate in Literature, and to ensure that his name and influence continue to resonate both within Iceland and across the globe.
The selection committee’s verdict, written by Ukrainian author Andrey Kurkov noted that Rushdie’s name is “inseparable from his epic novels, saturated with exquisite and magical details, and from his struggle for freedom of creativity, freedom of thought, and the right to remain true to himself. For readers all over the world, the image of Rushdie — who, for more than thirty years, has continued to create enchanting novels under the terrible pressure of a threat to his life — has become a symbol of courage and unbroken will.”Speaking of Rushdie’s novels, Kurkov described them as “fascinating, philosophical, and enlightening robed tales for readers ready to discover new worlds”
Rushdie’s novel “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder,” about the onstage attack on him at a literary event in Upstate New York, was released last August.
According to him, the book is “a way to take charge of what happened and to answer violence with art.” He was attacked onstage at the Chautauqua Institution, a summer arts community in New York, where he was scheduled to speak about the U.S. as a haven for exiled writers. As the event was about to begin, Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old New Jersey man jumped onstage and stabbed Rushdie repeatedly in the face and the abdomen before members of the audience pulled the assailant away. Rushdie was gravely injured, placed temporarily on a ventilator, and left blind in his right eye.
Rushdie spent about 10 years under police protection in Britain, living in hiding after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran called for his execution in 1989 because his novel “The Satanic Verses” was considered offensive to Islam. “The book was banned in India, and he was barred from the country for more than a decade,” The New York Times reported.