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The Lavin Agency Speakers Bureau

A speakers bureau that represents the best original thinkers,
writers, and doers for speaking engagements.

Sir Salman Rushdie

What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy.

One of the Most Celebrated Writers of Our Time | New York Times Bestselling Author of Knife and The Satanic Verses

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Lavin Exclusive Speaker

Sir Salman Rushdie is one of the most celebrated authors of our time—of any time. A brilliant provocateur, he’s penned a handful of classic novels, influenced a generation of writers, and received a Queen’s Knighthood for his “services to literature.” He stands as both a pop culture icon and one of the most thought-provoking proponents for free speech today.

“Rushdie has not just enlarged literature’s capacities, he has expanded the world’s imaginative possibilities. We owe him a huge debt of gratitude.”— The Times

Sir Salman Rushdie’s novels, greeted always with anticipation and acclaim, include The Satanic Verses, The Moor’s Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet and The Enchantress of Florence.

His most recent book, Knife, is a #1 international bestseller that has been nominated for the National Book Award. It’s a riveting, deeply personal account of surviving and healing after an attempt on his life. It’s been lauded across the media: The Guardian calls it “a courageous defence of free speech,” while The New York Times hails it as “a visceral, intimate book.”

His latest New York Times bestselling novel, Victory City, tells the epic tale of a woman who breathes a fantastical empire into existence only to be consumed by it. It was named a best book of the year by The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, TIME, NPR, The Washington Post, and more. His previous work, Languages of Truth, is a collection of non-fiction essays from 2003-2020, which illuminate truths about our society and culture through his gorgeous and often searing prose.

For his masterwork of magic realism, Midnight’s Children, he won the prestigious Booker Prize, and later, the Best of the Booker. The novel has since been adapted to film by the Academy Award-nominated director, Deepa Mehta, and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. As well, a new adaptation of Midnight’s Children is in development at Netflix, with showrunner Vishal Bhardwaj, whose work Rushdie calls “visually astonishing”.

Rushdie is also the author of the bestselling memoir Joseph Anton. His Luka and the Fire of Life is a children’s novel and a companion to Haroun and the Sea of Stories. His recent novel Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights was a New York Times bestseller, as was The Golden House.

An eclectic writer and noted public intellectual, Rushdie has won many of the world’s top literary prizes, published a heralded collection of essays, Step Across the Line, and served for two years as president of The PEN American Center, the world’s oldest human rights organization.

Testimonials

Hands down, from multiple sources: the best lecture we’ve had. We filled our hall to capacity. Mr. Rushdie was substantive, charming, funny, and fully human—nothing short of brilliant.

Boise State

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Speech Topics

Literature

Public Events, Private LivesLiterature and Politics in the Modern World

In his spellbinding lectures, Sir Salman Rushdie braids together the worlds of literature, politics, and philosophy—a show of intellectual pyrotechnics and deadpan humor that conveys fully the texture of modern life. He speaks about the major themes coursing through his writing, his life and our world: freedom of expression, religion, pop culture, current events at home and abroad, East-West relations, and the role of the artist to shape our understanding of the world. For those more interested in his writing, he touches on storytelling, the magical realism he made famous, and the unique sensibility of his self-proclaimed “globe-swallowing, capricious books.” Few authors are as enrapturing in person as Rushdie, or as fully embracing of their well-earned place in the spotlight.

Politics & Society

The Liberty Instinct

In this talk, Salman Rushdie discusses fundamental freedoms and the attack they face both from religious extremism and from political correctness.

Literature

Wonder Tales

Salman Rushdie examines the source of literature in the fabulist tales of the East, as well as Western folktale, and how that’s relevant to the modern world.