Salman Rushdie Awarded Prestigious Dayton Literary Peace Prize
Esteemed author Salman Rushdie has been honoured with a lifetime achievement award at the Dayton Literary Peace Prize ceremony in Ohio. The event, held on Sunday, 9th November 2025, recognised Rushdie for his profound literary contributions and his enduring promotion of peace through his work. This accolade comes after the publication of his first work of fiction since the harrowing attack on him in 2022.
A Legacy of Literature and Peace
The Dayton Literary Peace Prizes are unique in celebrating both literary merit and the power of writing to foster peace. Awards are presented annually across three categories: fiction, nonfiction, and lifetime achievement. The city of Dayton holds historical significance as the location for the negotiations that produced the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the brutal war in the Balkans—a conflict marked by ethnic cleansing that claimed over 300,000 lives and displaced more than a million people.
Rushdie's Tumultuous Journey
The 78-year-old writer is most famous for his 1988 novel, "The Satanic Verses," which sparked international controversy. A dream sequence involving the Prophet Muhammad led to accusations of blasphemy and a 1989 fatwa from Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, calling for the Indian-born author's death. This forced Rushdie into hiding for nearly a decade.
His life was again threatened in 2022 when he was stabbed on a lecture stage in New York, an attack that left him blinded in one eye. His assailant, Hadi Matar, was a 24-year-old US citizen who was not born when "The Satanic Verses" was published. Authorities stated Matar was attempting to fulfil the decades-old edict when he travelled from his New Jersey home to target Rushdie. Matar was later sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Rushdie chronicled this traumatic event in his acclaimed 2024 memoir, "Knife," which was a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction. His latest work, "The Eleventh Hour," is his 23rd publication and features three novellas and two short stories.
An Illustrious List of Honourees
The lifetime achievement award, also known as the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, bears the name of the American diplomat who helped architect the Dayton Peace Accords. Rushdie now joins a distinguished group of past recipients, including:
- Former US President Jimmy Carter
- Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel
- Feminist icon Gloria Steinem
- Authors Margaret Atwood, John Irving, Barbara Kingsolver, and Studs Terkel
Other honourees at this year's ceremony included Kaveh Akbar for his novel "Martyr!" and Sunil Amrith for "The Burning Earth."
