in “The Knife”, Salman Rushdie recounts the attack that almost cost him his life

Twenty months after the attack which almost cost him his life, the writer recounts his attack in a book which he presents as an outlet. Salman Rushdie had already mentioned this attack during the Frankfurt International Book Fair last fall, which franceinfo attended.

This is the book he never wanted to write: the story of those 27 endless seconds and those 12 stab wounds to the face, neck, chest and hand. The writer Salman Rushdie recounts in The knifememoirs which come out in mid-April around the world, the attack which almost killed him in 2022, the last episode of a life under threat since his Satanic verses.

At the Frankfurt book fair in the fall of 2023, the 76-year-old novelist, who has lived under the threat of a fatwa since 1989, compared his novel to an outlet. “What I really felt was that it was impossible to write anything else. This would have seemed absurd to me until I got rid of the subject. I’m happy to still be here to tell it. But it was a close call.”.

One summer day, in the middle of a literary conference on the shores of the American Great Lakes, north of New York, a man rushes towards the American-British writer, born in India. Knife in hand, he stabs him multiple times, seriously injuring him. Helicoptered to hospital, Salman Rushdie underwent surgery for 8 hours before spending six weeks convalescing. The novelist suffered serious after-effects and notably lost the sight of one eye.

“I don’t need to give him more of my time.”

On the American channel CBS, he returned to his attack and read an extract from his novel. “In the corner of my right eye – the last thing my right eye would ever see – I saw the man in black running towards me. Black clothes, black mask… I admit that I had sometimes imagined my assassin getting up in a public forum or other and coming for me in this way“, he writes, like a confession.

Never, throughout the 272 pages of his novel, Salman Rushdie mentions the name of his attacker, a young American of Lebanese origin, sympathetic to the Islamic Republic of Iran. He also refuses to mention it in an interview: “He and I had 27 seconds together. That’s all. I don’t need to give him more of my time“, he said. Before slipping: “One of the surgeons told me that at first I was unlucky, then that I was very lucky. I asked him why? He told me that my luck was is that the man who attacked me had no idea how to kill someone with a knife.“

Salman Rushdie intends to continue participating in public events: “I don’t want a confined life. I want to live my life”.