Salman Rushdie, the Booker Prize-winning author of “Midnight’s Children” and “The Satanic Verses,” will be presented with Liberatum’s 14th Cultural Honor at a ceremony in London on July 8.
The event simultaneously marks the international cultural diplomacy organization’s 25th anniversary.
Liberatum, founded in 2001, positions the honor as both a tribute to Rushdie’s literary legacy and a public statement on freedom of expression. The evening’s theme reflects the organization’s view that free expression is under greater threat – in more places and more ways – than at any point in recent memory.
The ceremony comes months after Rushdie’s story reached new audiences through “Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie,” Alex Gibney’s Sundance documentary that includes never-before-seen footage of the August 2022 stabbing at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York, in which Rushdie was attacked by Hadi Matar. The film also draws on video diaries shot in Rushdie’s hospital room in the days after the attack by his wife, Rachel Eliza Griffiths. “People should see what terrorism looks like and experience it,” Rushdie told Variety at Sundance.
Confirmed guests representing the world of film and television include director Richard Eyre, filmmaker Asif Kapadia, journalist and filmmaker Louis Theroux, and director Terry Gilliam. BAFTA-winning filmmaker Amma Asante is also among those attending.
The guest list further spans literature, media and public life. Antonia Fraser, the biographer and historian, will be present, as will Tina Brown, the former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker and one of the most influential voices in transatlantic media.
The program of participants brings together a cross-disciplinary group of artists and thinkers. Indian contemporary artist Bharti Kher, whose sculptures, installations and paintings draw on mythology and the politics of identity, will take part in the evening. Also appearing is Griffiths, the acclaimed American poet, novelist and visual artist whose debut novel “Promise” drew widespread critical acclaim in 2023 – and whose intimate footage of Rushdie’s recovery formed the emotional core of Gibney’s film. British journalist and The Independent editor-in-chief Geordie Greig, is confirmed, as is Indian filmmaker Mozez Singh. Together they span visual art, poetry, film, fiction and journalism – a reminder, in Liberatum’s framing, of how many forms of expression are worth defending.
Past honorees in Liberatum’s Cultural Honor series include Zaha Hadid and Francis Ford Coppola, placing Rushdie in a lineage the organization describes as figures who have both achieved the highest levels of artistic distinction and used their platforms to expand the boundaries of human possibility.
Rushdie survived a near-fatal stabbing at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York in August 2022. He responded by continuing to write and speak publicly, and published “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder” in 2024. His most recent work is “The Eleventh Hour: A Quintet of Stories.” Across a career spanning 23 books, his titles have been translated into more than 40 languages.
The ceremony venue, Town Hall, is a reimagined cultural space within the former Camden Town Hall building, designed by Tom Dixon and spanning more than 60,000 square feet in the King’s Cross district of central London.
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