(New York) Living since 1989 under the threat of death from a fatwa issued by the Islamic regime of Iran, Salman Rushdie has long wondered about the identity of the person who would ultimately kill him. About to be stabbed in 2022, his first thought was: “so it’s you”.
The British-American writer recounts his thoughts on the public assault that brought him to death’s door in The knifewhich will be published on April 16 in the United States, and April 18 in France by Editions Gallimard.
Salman Rushdie was stabbed in August 2022 during a literary conference in Chautauqua, in the New York area, by an American of Lebanese origin suspected of being sympathetic to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Seriously injured, the writer has since lost the sight of one eye.
The 76-year-old author read an extract from his new work for the American channel CBS News in a program which will be broadcast on Sunday.
He describes “the last thing my right eye will ever see”: a man in black clothes “coming fast and low,” like a “crouching missile.”
“I have to admit, I sometimes imagined my killer standing up at some public event or something, and lunging at me in exactly that way,” he explains.
“So my first thought when I saw this murderous form rushing towards me was: ‘So there you are, there you are.’ »
Born in Bombay, India in 1947, Salman Rushdie published his first novel Grimus in 1975.
Author of around fifteen novels, stories for young people, short stories and essays, he received the Booker Prize in 1981, one of the most prestigious literary awards for Midnight’s Children.
The writer had set a part of the Muslim world ablaze with the publication of Satanic verses in 1988, leading the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to issue a fatwa calling for his assassination.
He had been forced to live in hiding and under police protection, going from hiding place to hiding place.
On CBS News, he said one of the surgeons who saved his life told him: “First you were really unlucky, then really lucky.”
When Salman Rushdie asked him what the lucky part was, the surgeon reportedly replied: “The man who attacked you had no idea how to kill a man with a knife.”