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. Alaa Abdel-Fattah, the imprisoned Egyptian activist, was given the Disturbing the Peace Award to a Courageous Writer at Risk. Rushdie, 76, noted that last month he had received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, and now was getting a prize for disturbing the peace, leaving him wondering which side of “the fence” he was on. “He was inspirational to me as for many, many writers, and to receive an award in his name is a great honor,” Rushdie added.

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Persons: Salman Rushdie, Vaclav Havel, Rushdie, “, ” Rushdie, Azar Nafisi, Vaclav, Havel, Lesley Stahl, Alaa Abdel, Fattah, Adhaf Soueif, ”, ” Abdel, Hosni Mubarak, Ruhollah Khomeini's Organizations: Lolita, Library Foundation, Communist, CBS, Abdel, Trade Locations: Western New York, Tehran ”, Czech, Czechoslovakia