Famed novelist Salman Rushdie apparently wasn't too impressed with the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire, telling an audience in the US it "piles impossibility on impossibility."

Rushdie, who spent years in hiding after Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called for the author's death in 1989, made the remarks yesterday during a speech to more than 1,000 people at Atlanta's Emory University.