O British writer sent a video message to the British Book Awards, which awarded him, on Monday night, the Freedom to Publish prize, which “recognizes the determination of authors, publishers and booksellers who take a stand against intolerance, despite the threats they face,” reports the AP.
“We live in a time when freedom of expression and freedom of publication have never, in all my lifetime, been so threatened in Western countries,” he said.
“Now that I’m sitting here in the United States, I have to look at the extraordinary attack on libraries and books for children in schools. The attack on the very idea of libraries themselves. It is extremely alarming and we have to be very aware and fight hard against it.” , he added.
During his speech, Salman Rushdie also criticized publishers who alter decades-old books to adapt them to modern sensibilities, such as the large-scale cuts and reprints made to works by children’s author Roald Dahl and creator James Bond, Ian Fleming.
Publishers must allow books “to come to us from their time and be from their time. And if that is difficult to accept, don’t read it, read another book”, considered the author.
Salman Rushdie, 75, appeared in the video visibly thinner than before the attack and wore glasses with a tinted lens.
The writer was blinded in his right eye and suffered nerve damage in his hand following a stabbing by a 24-year-old man as he began a lecture in Chautauqua, New York, in August of last year.
The alleged attacker, Hadi Matar, has pleaded not guilty to charges of assault and attempted murder.
Salman Rushdie spent years in hiding and under police protection after the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, issued a ‘fatwa’ (religious decree) in 1989 calling for his death over what he considered blasphemy, from the novel “The Verses Satanic”.
The writer gradually returned to public life after the Iranian government distanced itself from the order in 1998, saying it would not support any attempt to kill him, although the ‘fatwa’ was never officially revoked.
Salman Rushdie won the Booker Prize in 1981 for his novel “Midnight’s Children” and in 2008 he was named the best ever winner of that prestigious literary prize.
His most recent novel, ‘Victory City’, completed a month before the attack, was released internationally in February this year, by Penguin Random House, and will arrive in Portugal at the end of the year, edited by Dom Quixote.
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