Salman Rushdie accepted the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade on Sunday, the AP reports. The jury for the award praised the author for remaining “a passionate defender of freedom of thought and expression—just as equally for himself as for those whose views he does not share.”
Rushdie was the subject of a 1989 fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini calling for the novelist’s death after the publication of his controversial novel The Satanic Verses. Last year, Rushdie was attacked on stage in Chautauqua, New York, and survived after being stabbed multiple times; the assault left him unable to see out of one eye and use one hand.
Earlier this month, Rushdie announced a memoir about his attack, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, slated for publication next April by Penguin Random House.
“Today, despite still wrestling with massive physical and psychological consequences, he continues to write with great imagination and deep humanity,” the prize jury said. “We honor Salman Rushdie for his indomitable spirit, for his affirmation of life and for enriching our world with his love of storytelling.”
In his acceptance speech, Rushdie said, “What do we do about free speech when it is so widely abused? We should still do, with renewed vigor, what we have always needed to do: to answer bad speech with better speech, to counter false narratives with better narratives, to answer hate with love, and to believe that the truth can still succeed even in an age of lies.”
The Peace Prize of the German Book Trade was established in 1950 by the German Publishers and Booksellers Association. Previous honorees have included Herman Hesse, Astrid Lindgren, Václav Havel, and Margaret Atwood.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
