Sir Salman Rushdie is one of the most celebrated and controversial authors of our time -- of any time. A brilliant provocateur, he's penned a handful of classic novels, overcome an infamous fatwa, received a Queen's Knighthood for "services to literature," and become both a pop culture icon and one of the most thought-provoking proponents for free speech today.

Sir Salman Rushdie's novels, greeted always with anticipation and acclaim, include The Satanic Verses, The Moor's Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet and 2008's The Enchantress of Florence. For his masterwork of magic realism, Midnight's Children, he won the presitigious Booker Prize, and later, the Best of the Booker. An eclectic writer and noted public intellectual, Rushdie has won many of the world's top literary prizes, published a heralded collection of essays, Step Across the Line, written a book on The Wizard of Oz, and served for two years as president of The PEN American Center, the world's oldest human rights organization.

In his spellbinding lectures, Sir Salman Rushdie braids together the worlds of literature, politics and philosophy -- a show of intellectual pyrotechnics and deadpan humor that conveys fully the texture of modern life. He speaks about the major themes coursing through his writing, his life and our world: freedom of expression, religion, pop culture, Muslim culture, current events at home and abroad, East-West relations, and the role of the artist to shape our understanding of the world.

For those more interested in his writing, he touches on storytelling, the magical realism he made famous, and the unique sensibility of his self-proclaimed "globe-swallowing, capricious books." Few authors are as enrapturing in person as Rushdie is, or as fully embracing of their well-earned place in the spotlight.