BANGALORE: Much acclaimed Indian-British novelist Salman Rushdie bagged the 2014 PEN Pinter Prize.  The award was established in 2009, in memory of British playwright Harold Pinter and each year the prize is awarded to a British writer for their outstanding contribution to literature. The honor has been aptly recognized with Rushdie as in the words of Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter, the presentee of this award should have an “unflinching, unswerving” gaze upon the world and possess a “fierce intellectual determination to define the real truth of our lives and our societies’’.

The award will be presented to Rushdie at a public event at the British Library on 9^th of October at which Rushdie will deliver an address. In response Rushdie said that ”It’s very moving to receive an award named after my friend Harold Pinter, whose literary genius was matched by his passion for social justice, and to follow in the distinguished footsteps of the previous recipients, Tony Harrison, Hanif Kureishi, David Hare, Carol Ann Duffy and Tom Stoppard. The work of PEN, both in promoting the best of world literature and in opposing abuses of freedom, continues to be vitally important, and I’m proud to have been a part of that effort in England as well as the United States.”

This year’s candidature for Salman Rushdie was chosen by judges like Michael Billington, Antonia Fraser, Simon Jenkins, Kamila Shamsie and President of English PEN and Chair of Judges, Maureen Freely.
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