Salman Rushdie’s ‘Knife’ recounts his stabbing. His press tour has its own revelations
Alexandra Del Rosario April 15, 2024 Salman Rushdie
isn’t limiting himself to just his new memoir to recount the 2022 stabbing attack that nearly killed him.
Ahead of the release of his newest memoir , “Knife,” the “Satanic Verses” author has returned to the media spotlight, recounting some gruesome details of his near-death experience and how he seeks to take “the power back.”
On Aug. 12, 2022
,
Rushdie appeared at the Chautauqua Institution in New York, where he
was
supposed to deliver a lecture. While he prepared, a man later identified as
Hadi Matar
rushed the stage and
allegedly
stabbed the author multiple times in the neck and body. “I actually thought he’d
punched
me very hard, I didn’t realize there was a knife in his hand,” the author,
76
, told the BBC in a
video
interview published Monday.
Author Salman Rushdie on ventilator, could lose eye after stabbing on lecture stage
Rushdie was swiftly hospitalized with serious injuries and underwent surgery. In the attack, the Booker Prize winner suffered severed nerves in his hand and right eye, among other injuries. For the BBC, he recalled how his eye “was kind of hanging out of my face.”
He added
in the video interview
: “[The eye was] sitting on my cheek like a soft-boiled egg. And now I’m blind.
The BBC reported that Rushdie said this is from the text component of their story
losing vision in his eye “upsets me every day
” and that he needs to
take more caution when performing daily activities like walking or pouring himself water.
With one blacked -out lens on his glasses,
Rushdie added that he was grateful
to not sustain not to have sustained
any brain damage in the attack, telling
the
BBC, “It meant I was actually still able to be myself.”
Salman Rushdie’s upcoming memoir delays trial of man charged in 2022 stabbing
The 2022 stabbing and its aftermath may be at the core of “Knife,” but Rushdie told the New York Times
in a recent interview
that he sees his memoir as being about “both love and hatred one overcoming the other.”
Rushdie established a decades-long career by putting his beliefs and experiences with religion and politics on the page. Decades prior to the 2022 stabbing, he notably faced threats of violence for his work. In 1989
,
Irans
then- Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
delivered a fatwa, a religious decree, calling for Rushdie’s death after the publication of “The Satanic Verses,” which some Muslims consider blasphemous.
Despite the reverence and ire his work has inspired, Rushdie told the
New York Times NYT
, “I never felt symbolic.”
“I’m just Ken,” he said, referring to the
Ryan Gosling
musical spectacular from
Greta Gerwig
‘s “Barbie” movie. “I’m just me. I’m just somebody who’s trying to be a writer, trying to do his best. And that’s all I’ve ever wanted to be.”
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When “Knife” was
first
announced last October, Rushdie said his memoir was “necessary” to help him “take charge of what happened, and to answer violence with art.” However, speaking
onwith
anchor George Stephanopoulos
on Monday, Rushdie admitted
that at first
he
first
hesitated to write the forthcoming book.
“First off I didn’t want to do it, then I discovered I kind of had to do it, and then I really got into it and wanted to do it,” he said. “Anything else seemed dumb to do, when there was this huge subject sitting right in my face.”
He added: “It became my way of controlling the narrative, fighting back. … That’s what it felt like. Taking the power back.”
“Knife,” which hits shelves on Tuesday, is described
in materials from the publisher
as “a gripping, intimate, and ultimately life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art and finding the strength to stand up again.
Judge denies bail for Salman Rushdie’s alleged attacker and bars interviewsAhead of the memoir’s arrival,
A New York judge ruled in January that Matar and his defense team are entitled by law to see Rushdie’s manuscript and related material before
standing he stands
trial.
“Its not just the book, Matar’s attorney
Nathaniel
Barone said in January. Every little note Rushdie wrote down, I get, Im entitled to. Every discussion, every recording, anything he did in regard to this book.
As a result, the trial was delayed and is expected to begin in the fall, BBC reported. New Jersey resident Matar, 26, has been held without bail
since after
his
alleged
attack on Rushdie. No motive for the attack has been disclosed.
