Salman Rushdie to Receive Dayton Peace Prize for Lifetime Achievement

In Dayton, Ohio, Salman Rushdie was celebrated at the Dayton Literary Peace Prize event, where he received a prestigious lifetime achievement award. This recognition came as he launched his first fictional work since surviving a stabbing attack during a New York lecture three years ago.

The awards, which commend both literary excellence and the promotion of peace, are presented annually in categories of fiction, nonfiction, and lifetime achievement. Dayton, the city hosting these awards, holds historical significance as the site where the Dayton Peace Accords were forged in 1995. These accords ended a brutal conflict in the Balkans, a war that tragically resulted in over 300,000 deaths and displaced a million individuals.

Rushdie, now 78, gained fame with his 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses.” The book included a controversial dream sequence that led to accusations of blasphemy and a 1989 fatwa by Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, calling for Rushdie’s death. This edict forced the Indian-born author into hiding. In 2022, he was attacked on stage, resulting in the loss of sight in one eye. His attacker, Hadi Matar, who was only 24 at the time and not yet born when “The Satanic Verses” was published, received a 25-year prison sentence.

Matar, a U.S. citizen, had traveled from Fairview, New Jersey, to Chautauqua, New York, to carry out the long-standing edict against Rushdie. The attack occurred in front of a shocked audience at a summer retreat located around 70 miles southwest of Buffalo.

In 2024, Rushdie published a memoir titled “Knife,” detailing the attack, which became a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction. His latest work, “The Eleventh Hour,” comprises three novellas and two short stories, marking his 23rd publication.

Past recipients of the lifetime achievement award include notable figures such as former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, feminist icon Gloria Steinem, and esteemed writers like Margaret Atwood, John Irving, Barbara Kingsolver, and Studs Terkel. The award, also known as the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, honors the American diplomat who played a pivotal role in the Dayton Peace Accords.

Other honorees this year include Kaveh Akbar for his novel, “Martyr!” about a poet and son of Iranian immigrants dealing with a mysterious family past, and Sunil Amrith, for “The Burning Earth,” a history of how the global environment has been shaped by empires, wars and humanity’s increasing freedom of movement.