Novelist Salman Rushdie was awarded the Liberatum Cultural Honour in London on Wednesday (July 8, 2026) at a ceremony running under the theme “Freedom of Expression.”
He is the 14th recipient of the award which recognizes both artistic achievements and contributions to cross-cultural understanding. Previous honorees include authors Sir V.S. Naipaul, Gore Vidal, film maker Francis Ford Coppola, Hollywood actress and activist Susan Sarandon among others.
In an interview with Reuters before he went on stage, Rushdie said freedom of speech is under “real assault” around the world.
The Indian-born British-American author is quoted saying, “I live in America and I never thought that there would be such an assault on free speech, coming from the authorities in the land of the First Amendment.” He went on to add, “The fact that they have been attacking journalists, comedians, writers, artists, intellectuals for expressing dissenting opinions shows what they think of free speech.”
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“There’s a big struggle. I have to say that there’s quite a good fight back there. For instance, all these books being banned from libraries, there’s a lot of challenges to those. And in many cases the challenges are successful,” he noted.
According to Rushdie, it’s a “difficult time in many parts of the world” and “I think it’s a moment when we have to gird our loins and fight a fight that I thought we’d won. And it turns out we didn’t win it. We just won it for a while.”
Over the last several decades, Rushdie has faced death threats after his fourth book, The Satanic Verses” was published in 1988. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini place a Fatwa on his head, and the book was banned in many countries including India.
In 2022, while addressing a meeting in upstate New York, Rushdie was attacked by a member of the audience who rushed onstage and stabbed him repeated. The attack left him blind in one eye and affected the use of one of his hands.
“I’m fortunate to be all right. It’s now been almost four years since the attack, and I’m as mended as I’m going to be, which is not bad,” Rushdie told Reuters.
Regardless of his injuries, Rushdie has been prolific since the attack.
“I’ve actually published three books in the last three years, so it’s going all right. And I’m working on something now, but it’s in early stages. It’s not really ready to talk about.”
The Booker Prize-winning writer has published 23 books, including novels “Midnight’s Children,” “The Moor’s Last Sigh”, “Anton Chekov” “Shalimar the Clown”, including children’s books like “Haroun and the Sea of Stories”.