After months of waiting, Sir Salman Rushdie is finally making his way to Sun Valley for a much-anticipated lecture at the Sun Valley Pavilion on Friday, Sept. 10, at 6 p.m. Rushdie was scheduled to speak last February as part of the Sun Valley Center for the Arts Lecture Series but was unable to make the trip due to a blizzard on the East Coast. Fortunately, The Center was able to reschedule the lecture—and move it to a larger venue—the Sun Valley Pavilion.
Rushdie is one of the most celebrated and controversial authors of modern times. He was catapulted to international fame when his book "The Satanic Verses" provoked a "fatwa," a religious edict, from Ayatollah Khomeini calling for his death. Fearing for his life, Rushdie spent nearly a decade "underground," and seldom appeared in public. A leading proponent of free speech, Rushdie was knighted by the British government in 2007 for "services to literature."
Though more people are aware of the controversy sparked by "The Satanic Verses" than have read his books, Rushdie is a critic's darling whose epic novel "Midnight's Children" not only won Great Britain's prestigious Booker Prize in 1981, but was recognized in 1993 and again in 2008 as the best novel to have received the prize during its first 25 and 40 years.
His other books include "The Moor's Last Sigh," "Shalimar the Clown," "The Enchantress of Florence" and the nonfiction "The Jaguar Smile," a book about Nicaragua.
Raised in India and Pakistan and educated in England, Rushdie is currently the Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emory University in Atlanta. In announcing his appointment in 2007, Emory President James Wagner called Rushdie "one of the foremost writers of our generation [and] a courageous champion of human rights and freedom."
The Sun Valley Center for the Arts' lecture series for the fall and winter will include Ira Glass, host of NPR's "This American Life," on Saturday, Sept. 25. In addition, clean water advocate Maude Barlow will speak on Thursday, Nov. 4, and Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of New York's Hayden Planetarium, will give a talk on Wednesday, Nov. 17. "Fast Food Nation" author Eric Schlosser will speak on Thursday, Feb. 24, and Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for President George W. Bush, will give a lecture on Thursday, March 10.
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Ticket information
- People holding tickets to the canceled lecture have been reissued tickets for the new date. These tickets are available for pickup at The Center in Ketchum and will be held at will-call until the Friday, Sept. 10, lecture.
- Tickets have been reprinted with the new date, time and location information on blue ticket stock. Only the new tickets will be accepted at the door.
- Rushdie will sign books after his lecture. You may bring a book you already own, or buy a book from a selection of works that will be sold at the pavilion on the night of the lecture.
- Because of the change to a larger venue, additional tickets are still available. Individual tickets for Rushdie's talk are $30 for Sun Valley Center for the Arts members and $40 for nonmembers. To purchase tickets, visit www.sunvalleycenter.org, call 726-9491, ext. 10 or stop by The Center in Ketchum.
Sabina Dana Plasse: splasse@mtexpress.com
Sir Salman Rushdie will give a presentation at the Sun Valley Pavilion on Friday, Sept. 10, at 6 p.m.
Courtesy photo by Beowulf Sheehan
