Current:Home > NewsSalman Rushdie’s ‘Knife’ is unflinching about his brutal stabbing and uncanny in its vital spirit -Elevate Capital Network
Salman Rushdie’s ‘Knife’ is unflinching about his brutal stabbing and uncanny in its vital spirit
View
Date:2025-04-13 21:53:24
NEW YORK (AP) — In Salman Rushdie’s first book since the 2022 stabbing that hospitalized him and left him blind in one eye, the author wastes no time reliving the day he thought might be his last.
“At a quarter to eleven on August 12, 2022, on a sunny Friday morning in upstate New York, I was attacked and almost killed by a young man with a knife just after I came out on stage at the amphitheater in Chautauqua to talk about the importance of keeping writers safe from harm,” Rushdie writes in the opening paragraph of the memoir “Knife,” published Tuesday.
At just over 200 pages, “Knife” is a brief work in the canon of Rushdie, among the most exuberant and expansive of contemporary novelists. “Knife” is also his first memoir since “Joseph Anton,” the 2012 publication in which he looked back on the fatwa, the death decree, issued more than 20 years earlier by Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini because of the alleged blasphemy in Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses.”
Rushdie was initially driven into hiding, and for years lived under constant protection. But the threat had seemingly receded and he had for some time been enjoying his preferred life of travel, social engagement and a free imagination, out at play in such recent novels as “Quichotte” and “Victory City.”
As Rushdie observes in “Knife,” subtitled “Meditations After an Attempted Murder,” he had sometimes pictured his “public assassin” turning up. But the timing of the 2022 attack seemed not just startling, but “anachronistic,” the rising of a “murderous ghost from the past,” returning to settle a score Rushdie thought long resolved. He refers to August 11, 2022, as his “last innocent evening.”
But in many ways, “Knife” is as notable for the spirit it shares with his other books as it is for the blunt and horrifying descriptions of the attack that did, and did not, change his life.
In the book’s first chapter, Rushdie praises the “pure heroism,” the physical courage of the Chautauqua Institution event moderator Henry Reese, who grabbed the assailant. But if another kind of heroism is hope and determination (and humor) in the wake of trauma, then “Knife” is a heroic book, documenting Rushdie’s journey from lying in his own blood to a return to the same stage 13 months later and attaining a state of “wounded happiness.”
LOVE AND MARRIAGE
Part of the story of “Knife” is that Rushdie’s life, even over these past two years, is about more than an act of murderous violence. He dedicates a chapter to meeting and marrying the poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths, who greeted him during a PEN America event in 2017 and revealed a “dazzling smile” Rushdie found himself unable to forget. She had been in New York City when she learned of the stabbing, and hurried on a private plane to be with him, having been told he was unlike to survive.
“I wasn’t dead,” Rushdie wrote. “I was in surgery.”
A DEPARTED FRIEND
As Rushdie recovered, he learned that his dear friend and fellow author Martin Amis was gravely ill with cancer. Rushdie and Amis were part of a circle of gifted friends from Britain that also included Christopher Hitchens and Ian McEwan. In what proved to be a farewell email, Rushdie praised the “generosity and kindness” of Amis’ encouragement after the knife attack and celebrated such Amis novels as “London Fields” and “Money.”
Amis died in May 2023.
‘THE A.’
Rushdie’s charged assailant is Hadi Matar, but the author refers to him as “The A.,” short for “The Ass” (or “Asinine man”). He does allow his imagination to expend itself on an unlikely dialogue with the fellow being he knows only through a momentous span of 27 seconds. Why even pretend to speak with his would-be killer? “I’m not looking for an apology. I do wonder how he feels, now that he has had time to think things over,” Rushdie writes.
Matar’s trial was delayed from January after a judge ruled he was allowed to seek the memoir’s manuscript and related materials.
THE HEALING
He will leave the hospital, “grow stronger in body and mind,” return to the events he attended so often before, like the annual PEN America gala. He will feel heartened by supportive messages, a “worldwide avalanche” — not just from friends, but heads of state, such as President Joe Biden, who will issue a statement citing Rushdie’s commitment to “sharing ideas without fear.”
The nearness of death, Rushdie writes, can make you feel a “great loneliness.” Words from others “make you feel that you’re not alone, that maybe you haven’t lived and worked in vain.”
veryGood! (83744)
Related
- Macy's says employee who allegedly hid $150 million in expenses had no major 'impact'
- As the homeless crisis worsens, unhoused people in these rural areas remain 'invisible'
- All the Candid 2024 People's Choice Awards Moments You Didn't See on TV
- ‘Bob Marley: One Love’ stirs up $27.7M weekend, ‘Madame Web’ flops
- As Trump Enters Office, a Ripe Oil and Gas Target Appears: An Alabama National Forest
- The first Black 'Peanuts' character finally gets his origin story in animated special
- Arrests made after girl’s body found encased in concrete and boy’s remains in a suitcase
- 4 men killed in shooting at neighborhood car wash in Birmingham, Alabama
- Sonya Massey's father decries possible release of former deputy charged with her death
- $1 million reward offered by Australian police to solve 45-year-old cold case of murdered mom
Ranking
- A Mississippi company is sentenced for mislabeling cheap seafood as premium local fish
- Rain pushes Daytona 500 to Monday in first outright postponement since 2012
- Loay Elbasyouni gave up hope many times that his parents would escape Gaza City. Here's how he saved them.
- The name has been released of the officer who was hurt in a gunfire exchange that killed a suspect
- Trump wants to turn the clock on daylight saving time
- 'Oppenheimer' wins best picture at 2024 BAFTA Awards, the British equivalent of Oscars
- Celebrate Presidents Day by learning fun, interesting facts about US presidents
- Rooney Mara Is Pregnant, Expecting Baby No. 2 With Joaquin Phoenix
Recommendation
Sarah J. Maas books explained: How to read 'ACOTAR,' 'Throne of Glass' in order.
Kelly Osbourne says Ozempic use is 'amazing' after mom Sharon's negative side effects
BIG unveil new renderings for NYC Freedom Plaza project possibly coming to Midtown
You’re So Invited to Look at Adam Sandler’s Sweetest Moments With Daughters Sadie and Sunny
NFL Week 15 picks straight up and against spread: Bills, Lions put No. 1 seed hopes on line
Louisiana’s crime-focused special legislative session begins
Harry Styles Debuts Winning Haircut During Rare Public Appearance at Soccer Game
Adam Sandler Has Plenty of NSFW Jokes While Accepting People's Icon Award at 2024 People's Choice Awards