Booker Prize winning controversial Indian-born author Salman Rushdie is hotter than Hollywood star Brad Pitt, according to his fourth wife Padma Lakshmi.

"Salman is handsome, beautiful and very sexy," The Sunday Times quoted actress and model Padma Lakshmi as saying.

Padma Lakshmi, a polyglot, who has also acted in Bollywood film Boom and modelled for famous fashion houses like Armani and Versace, married the writer in April this year.

Lakshmi is a celebrity in her own right. She has written a popular cookbook and hosts a cookery show too.

She and Rushdie have been seeing each other for a number of years now. India-born Salman Rushdie has had three earlier wives.

Rushdie has been one of the brightest of the writers in the last quarter of the twentieth century, though his books have often attracted controversy.

The most talked of was the fatwa announced by the Iranian government as it considered his novel, The Satanic Verses to be blasphemous and insulting to the the founder of Islam, Prophet Mohammad.