Salman Rushdie to speak at Duke

Rushdie will deliver his talk, “Public Events, Private Lives: Literature and Politics in the Modern World,” at 6 p.m. April 12 in Page Auditorium. The lecture will be followed by a brief question-and-answer session with the audience.

“Salman Rushdie is without question one of the greatest writers of the 20th and 21st centuries,” said Ian Baucom, director of the Franklin Humanities Institute.

Rushdie is the author of 10 novels, including “Midnight’s Children,” winner of the Booker Prize in 1981; “The Satanic Verses,” which made him a target of Muslim extremists; and most recently “Luka and the Fire of Life.” A fellow of the British Royal Society of Literature, he has received the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel twice, the Writers’ Guild Award, the James Tait Black Prize, the European Union’s Aristeion Prize for Literature and author of the year prizes in both Britain and Germany.

The event is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. Tickets can be picked up on a first-come, first-served basis at the University Box Office in the Bryan Center, starting March 15 for Duke students, faculty and staff and March 16 for the general public. Tickets are limited to two per person.