Rushdie met former model Padma Lakshmi in 1999

The Booker Prize-winning novelist will write the screenplay for The Firebird's Nest, while Bollywood film-maker Apoorva Lakhia will direct it.

The story explores a romance between an older man and a younger woman.

Lakshmi is almost 25 years younger than Bombay-born Rushdie, 56 - but Mr Lakhia says the tale, to be filmed in New York and India, is not about the couple.

"It is an interesting cross-cultural love story," Mr Lakhia said.

Muslims in India protested at Rushdie's visit on Monday

Ms Lakshmi is a former model who hosted a show on the Food Network and also had a role in Mariah Carey's 2001 film flop Glitter.

Her last film appearance was in a Bollywood action movie about supermodels, Boom, in 2003 - but it was roundly panned as being little more than soft porn.

She met Rushdie at a party in 1999. The Firebird's Nest, published in 1997, will be the first film adaptation of any of Rushdie's works.

The project comes after his novel Midnight's Children was turned into a play last year.

Rushdie earned notoriety after he faced a death threat contained in a fatwa issued in 1989 by Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini for blasphemy in The Satanic Verses.