“We, the public, are easily, lethally offended. We have come to think of taking offence as a fundamental right. We value very little more highly than our rage, which gives us, in our opinion, the moral high ground. From this high ground we can shoot down at our enemies and inflict heavy fatalities. We take pride in our short fuses. Our anger elevates, transcends.”

Indian-born British and American novelist

Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British and American novelist. He is known for fiction that blends magical realism with historical elements, and for writing about movement, rupture, and exchange between Eastern and Western worlds. His novels are often set on the Indian subcontinent and frequently center Indian characters or family life. Midnight's Children, his second novel, won the Booker Prize in 1981, and later it was selected twice as the best of all Booker winners, for the prize's 25th and 40th anniversaries.