Salman Rushdie will publish a book in April about last year’s attack which left him blind in his right eye and with a damaged left hand.
In a press release published Wednesday by the publisher Penguin Random House, the author explains that it was a necessary book for him, in order to “respond to violence with art”.
In August 2022, Rushdie was stabbed multiple times in the neck and abdomen by a man who rushed on stage as the author was preparing to give a lecture in Western New York. The attacker, Hadi Matar, has pleaded not guilty to charges of assault and attempted murder.
For some time after Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa in 1989 calling for Rushdie’s death for alleged blasphemy in his novel The Satanic Versesthe writer lived in seclusion and with 24-hour security. But for years he moved around with few restrictions, until the stabbing at the Chautauqua Institution.
The new 256-page book, entitled Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder will be in bookstores on April 16. It will be published by Random House, the imprint of Penguin Random House which earlier this year published his novel Victory City, completed before the attack. Among his other famous works are Midnight’s Children (Midnight’s Children), winner of a Booker Prize, Shame (Shame) And The Moor’s Last Sigh (The last sigh of the Moor).
Rushdie is also a prominent free speech advocate and a former president of PEN America.
Rushdie, aged 76, spoke to the New Yorker of his ordeal, telling interviewer David Remnick in a February issue that he had worked hard to avoid “recriminations and bitterness” and was determined to “look forward, not back “.