Born and brought up in the city now called Mumbai, he attended King's College, Cambridge. A British citizen, he is the author of novels mostly set in the Indian subcontinent. His narrative style blends myth and fantasy with real life, following the dictates of magical realism. After having debuted with the fictional tale Grimus (1975), he catapulted to literary fame with Midnight’s Children (1980), still considered today one of his best novels. This work won the “Best of the Bookers” in 1993, and again in 2008 as the best novel to have received the prize in the Bookers first 40 years of existence.  His most famous novel, however, is probably The Satanic Verses (1988) for which the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against him, considering the work blasphemous against Islam. This death sentence forced Rushdie to take refuge in Great Britain where he lived for many years under police protection. Besides the novels, he has also written a children’s book Haroun and the Sea of Stories  (1990), winner of the Writer's Guild Award, and has published several non-fiction works such as The Jaguar Smile (1987), Imaginary Homelands (1981-91), The Wizard of Oz (1992) and, as co-editor, The Vintage Book of Indian Writing. He is also the author of the collection of short stories titled East, West (1994). Rushdie has received numerous awards for his work including the European Union's Aristeion Prize for Literature and, in 1989 Germany's Author of the Year. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres since1999, the president of PEN American Center, as well as Honorary Professor in Humanities at MIT. His work has been translated into thirty languages.