India-born author Salman Rushdie has been awarded the prestigious Mailer Prize that honours writers who fully exercise their freedom of creativity and thrive on dialogue and debate.
The 68-year-old received the Mailer Center's Annual Lifetime Achievement Prize at a ceremony here last night.
The prize is named after renowned American writer Norman Mailer, considered among the most influential writers of the second half of the 20th century.
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The Norman Mailer Centre recognises writers from all over the world, in all genres, whether established or emerging and the Mailer Prize, the center's highest award, is given to writers whose work over the years have challenged readers' perspectives on the world around them.
During the ceremony, Rushdie was asked about the implications of winning the Lifetime Achievement Award to which he replied, "yeah, I'm not quitting."
Accepting the award, Rushdie said he is eager to teach Mailer's work in his classes at the New York University, according to a tweet by the Pratt Institute, which hosted the annual awards event at its Brooklyn campus.
Rushdie is the author of twelvenovels including the Booker Prize winnerMidnight's Children andThe Satanic Verses.
Hismost recent novel,Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights,was publishedin the English language in September 2015.
A Fellow of the British Royal Society of Literature, Rushdie has received, among other honours, the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel (twice), the Writers' Guild Award, the European Union's Aristeion Prize for Literature, the London International Writers' Award and a US National Arts Award.
He holds honorary doctorates and fellowships at six European and six American universities, is an Honorary Professor in the Humanities at MIT and University Distinguished Professor at Emory University.
Between 2004 and 2006 he served as President of PEN American Center, like Mailer, and for ten yearsserved as theChairman of the PEN World Voices International Literary Festival, which he helped to create.
