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Novelist Salman Rushdie in surgery after on-stage stabbing

The Indian-born author has enjoyed great success during his literary career of five decades - but he has also faced death threats for some of the content in his work.

It was Rushdie's fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, which became his most controversial book - and he was forced to go into hiding as a result of the backlash.

Let's take a closer look at the 75-year-old writer's life:

Born in Bombay - modern-day Mumbai - in 1947, he was educated in England and allowed his Muslim faith to lapse

His acclaimed second novel, Midnight's Children, won the Booker Prize in 1981

His book The Satanic Verses sparked international turmoil and sometimes deadly protests following its publication in 1988. Some Muslims accused Rushdie of blasphemy

Rushdie went into hiding for nine years after receiving death threats

A year after the book's publication, Iran's then supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa - or decree - calling for his assassination

Others who were involved with translating the book were attacked, even killed

Iran stopped formally backing the fatwa in 1998

Rushdie continued writing books afterwards and published an account of the controversy in 2012

He has two children, lives in the US, and was knighted by the Queen in 2007 for his services to literature