Sir Salman Rushdie: 'Fifty Shades of Grey makes Twilight look like War and Peace' "I wanted to slam the door on those years, but I always knew I would write it one day," he said. I thought if anyone was going to write it, I wanted to write it first. Separately, it was announced that a film based on his novel "Midnight's Children" is to be screened in India, a month after the film's director said she feared it might be banned. The film, which chronicles the story of an Indian family living through the tumultuous events from India's recent past including the partition in 1947 and 1970s state of emergency, features a voice-over by the author. The British author, who won the Booker Prize for Midnight's Children in 1981, was forced to cancel a visit to a literature festival in his native India earlier this year after assassination threats were made against him. The "The Satanic Verses," which many Muslims deemed blasphemous, is banned in India, and his depiction of sensitive issues like former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's role during the Emergency in Midnight's Children had thrown the film's screening into doubt.