Salman Rushdie visits Atlanta’s Emory University for opening of his literary archive

Salman Rushdie visits Emory for opening of archive

ATLANTA — Novelist Salman Rushdie is at Emory University this week for the official opening of his literary archive.

Rushdie, who is in the middle of a five-year stint as a distinguished lecturer at the Atlanta university, has donated his personal papers to Emory’s special collections library. The university has created an exhibit from the manuscripts, letters and photographs that will run through September.

While on campus, the India native will teach classes, give lectures and work with faculty.

“The opening of the archive is a landmark event for scholars and the public,” said Richard E. Luce, vice provost and director of Emory University Libraries.

Rushdie, 62, was forced into hiding in England for a decade because the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a 1989 fatwa, or religious edict, ordering Muslims to kill the author, saying his book, “The Satanic Verses,” insulted Islam. The Iranian government declared in 1998 that it would not support the fatwa but could not rescind it.

Still, some hardline Muslim groups have protested Rushdie in recent years and threatened to boycott organizations that are associated with him. Rushdie has said the fatwa is more “a piece of rhetoric than a real threat” now.

His collection at Emory includes private journals Rushdie kept during his time in hiding under the fatwa, but Emory officials say those documents won’t be open to the public until after his death. The collection also includes manuscripts from many of his novels, unpublished works, photos of him as a child and letters from public figures supporting him after the fatwa was issued.

Emory began courting Rushdie in 2004 after he delivered a series of lectures at the school’s Decatur campus. He said in 2007 that he chose Emory to house his archive because it was the only university that asked him for his papers and that they would be in good company.

The university has the archived collections from many well known writers, including Seamus Heaney, James Weldon Johnson, Flannery O’Connor and Alice Walker.

Rushdie’s novel “Midnight’s Children” won Britain’s Booker Prize, and was selected in 1993 as the best novel in 25 years of the Booker Prize.

He was knighted in 2007 by Queen Elizabeth II of England, the same year he divorced model and “Top Chef” host Padma Lakshmi after three years of marriage. He lives most of the year in England, where he is a citizen.

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