The latest honor for Salman Rushdie was a prize kept secret until minutes before he rose from his seat to accept it.
On Tuesday night, the author received the first-ever Lifetime Disturbing the Peace Award, presented by the Vaclav Havel Center on Manhattan바카라s Upper East Side. Only a handful of the more than 100 attendees had advance notice about Rushdie, whose whereabouts have largely been withheld from the general public since he was stabbed repeatedly in August of 2022 during a literary festival in Western New York.
바카라I apologize for being a mystery guest,바카라 Rushdie said Tuesday night after being introduced by 바카라Reading Lolita in Tehran바카라 author Azar Nafisi. 바카라I don바카라t feel at all mysterious. But it made life a little simpler.바카라
The Havel center, founded in 2012 as the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation, is named for the Czech playwright and dissident who became the last president of Czechoslovakia after the fall of the Communist regime in the late 1980s. The center has a mission to advance the legacy of Havel, who died in 2011 and was known for championing human rights and free expression. Numerous writers and diplomats attended Tuesday바카라s ceremony, hosted by longtime CBS journalist Lesley Stahl.
Alaa Abdel-Fattah, the imprisoned Egyptian activist, was given the Disturbing the Peace Award to a Courageous Writer at Risk. His aunt, the acclaimed author and translator Adhaf Soueif, accepted on his behalf and said he was aware of the prize.
바카라He바카라s very grateful,바카라 she said. 바카라He was particularly pleased by the name of the award, 바카라Disturbing the Peace.바카라 This really tickled him.바카라
Abdel-Fattah, who turns 42 later this week, became known internationally during the 2011 pro-democracy uprisings in the Middle East that drove out Egypt바카라s longtime President Hosni Mubarak. He has since been imprisoned several times under the presidency of Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, making him a symbol for many of the country바카라s continued autocratic rule.
Rushdie, 76, noted that last month he had received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, and now was getting a prize for disturbing the peace, leaving him wondering which side of 바카라the fence바카라 he was on.
He spent much of his speech praising Havel, a close friend whom he remembered as being among the first government leaders to defend him after the novelist was driven into hiding by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini바카라s 1989 decree calling for his death over the alleged blasphemy of 바카라The Satanic Verses.바카라
Rushdie said Havel was 바카라kind of a hero of mine바카라 who was 바카라able to be an artist at the same time as being an activist.바카라
바카라He was inspirational to me as for many, many writers, and to receive an award in his name is a great honor,바카라 Rushdie added.
