Salman Rushdie receives first-ever Lifetime Disturbing the Peace Award

Author Salman Rushdie receives the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation's first ever lifetime achievement disturbing the peace award at the Vaclav Havel Center on Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2023, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — The latest honor for Salman Rushdie was a prize kept secret until minutes before he rose from his seat to accept it.

On Tuesday night, the author received the first-ever Lifetime Disturbing the Peace Award, presented by the Vaclav Havel Center on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Only a handful of the more than 100 attendees had advance notice about Rushdie, whose whereabouts have largely been withheld from the general public since he was stabbed repeatedly in August of 2022 during a literary festival in Western New York.