Names and faces

Names and faces

FILE - Salman Rushdie attends the 68th National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner on Nov. 15, 2017, in New York. Writer Salman Rushdie has made a public speech nine months after being stabbed and seriously injured onstage, warning that freedom of expression in the West is under its most severe threat of his lifetime. Rushdie delivered a video message to the British Book Awards, where he was awarded the Freedom to Publish award on Monday evening May 15, 2023. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
FILE - Salman Rushdie attends the 68th National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner on Nov. 15, 2017, in New York. Writer Salman Rushdie has made a public speech nine months after being stabbed and seriously injured onstage, warning that freedom of expression in the West is under its most severe threat of his lifetime. Rushdie delivered a video message to the British Book Awards, where he was awarded the Freedom to Publish award on Monday evening May 15, 2023. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)


Writer Salman Rushdie delivered a speech nine months after being stabbed and seriously injured onstage, warning that freedom of expression is under severe threat in the West. Rushdie delivered a video message to the British Book Awards, where he was awarded the Freedom to Publish award Monday evening, a prize acknowledging "the determination of authors, publishers and booksellers who take a stand against intolerance, despite the ongoing threats they face." Rushdie, 75, looked thinner than before the attack and wore glasses with a tinted lens. He was blinded in his right eye and suffered nerve damage to a hand when he was attacked at a literary festival in New York state in August. The alleged assailant has pleaded innocent to charges of assault and attempted murder. "We live in a moment, I think, at which freedom of expression, freedom to publish, has not in my lifetime been under such threat in the countries of the West," Rushdie said. "Now I am sitting here in the U.S., I have to look at the extraordinary attack on libraries, and books for children in schools," he said. "The attack on the idea of libraries themselves. It is quite remarkably alarming, and we need to be very aware of it, and to fight against it very hard." Rushdie spent years in hiding with police protection after Iran's grand ayatollah in 1989 called for his death over the alleged blasphemy of the novel "The Satanic Verses." Rushdie won the Booker Prize in 1981 for his novel "Midnight's Children," and in 2008 was voted the best-ever winner of the prestigious fiction prize. His most recent novel, "Victory City," was published in February. Rushdie also criticized publishers who change decades-old books for modern sensibilities, such as large-scale cuts and rewrites to the works of children's author Roald Dahl and James Bond creator Ian Fleming. He said publishers should allow books "to come to us from their time and be of their time." He added, "And if that's difficult to take, don't read it, read another book."

Joe Biden took a brief break from being president Monday to focus on being "Pop," attending granddaughter Maisy Biden's graduation from the University of Pennsylvania. Maisy is the youngest daughter of Hunter Biden and his former wife, Kathleen Buhle, who both attended as well -- along with Maisy's sisters, Naomi and Finnegan, first lady Jill Biden and the Bidens' daughter, Ashley. Beforehand, some students waved at the president and took photos; he waved back and pumped his fist. But other than that, Biden was just another face in the crowd. The family sat apart from the rest of the audience. Actress and singer Idina Menzel delivered the commencement address, even belting out a few lines from the musical "Rent." Afterward, Biden and the family went to lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant.


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