Salman Rushdie is writing a ‘necessary book’ about his 2022 stabbing
Author Salman Rushdie has never been shy about sharing his beliefs and experiences, whether in incendiary novels on religion and politics or in a memoir about the years he spent hiding from a death sentence declared by Iran’s supreme leader. So it shouldn’t be surprising that he plans to publish an account of the stabbing attack that nearly killed him on a public stage in 2022.
On Wednesday Rushdie announced that his next book will be a memoir, “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder,” to be released in the U.S. by Penguin Random House on April 16.
“This was a necessary book for me to write: a way to take charge of what happened, and to answer violence with art,” Rushdie said in a statement released Wednesday by his publisher.
‘He’s going to live. That’s the important thing,’ says the author’s agent, adding that he can’t disclose Rushdie’s current whereabouts.
“Speaking out for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, about the traumatic events of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie answers violence with art, and reminds us of the power of words to make sense of the unthinkable,” reads Penguin Random House’s official synopsis of the upcoming book. “‘Knife’ is a gripping, intimate, and ultimately life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art — and finding the strength to stand up again.”
On that August day, Rushdie was stabbed in the neck and abdomen as he prepared to give a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution, a nonprofit education and retreat center, in Chautauqua, N.Y. The author suffered a damaged liver and severed nerves in an arm and an eye, and was placed on a ventilator immediately after the incident. He is now blind in his right eye and has lost the use of one hand.
The suspect in the attack, Hadi Matar of Fairview, N.J., was incarcerated, but has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and assault.
Salman Rushdie made an emotional and unexpected return to public life Thursday, accepting a special prize at the annual PEN America gala.
Rushdie, 75, spent years in hiding after the publication of his 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses.” Over the last two decades, Rushdie has traveled freely and become a vocal advocate and potent symbol of free expression.
On Valentine’s Day 1989, Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini delivered a fatwa, a religious decree, that called upon “all brave Muslims of the world” to “kill … without delay” the author, along with his editors and publishers, in retaliation for the book’s “insult” to “the sacred beliefs of Muslims.”
The Japanese translator of his book was stabbed to death. Another translator was attacked and wounded, as was the novel’s Norwegian publisher. Rushdie traveled with security protection, often under the name Joseph Anton, which he later used as the title of a book about that part of his life.
Salman Rushdie was marked for death and celebrated as an icon after writing “The Satanic Verses.” Last week’s near-fatal attack reminds us of the stakes
Less than a year after the original fatwa, Rushdie tried to get some of the heat off himself. He publicly disavowed parts of “The Satanic Verses,” specifically statements “uttered by any of the characters who insults the prophet Muhammad, or casts aspersions upon Islam, or upon the authenticity of the holy Koran.”
In later years Rushdie called this recantation the “biggest mistake of my life.”
Times staff writer Patt Morrison and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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