Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

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The Instant Sunday Times #1 Bestseller - a moving, life-affirming memoir about survival and the power of love to heal, from Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie On the morning of 12 August 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black - black clothes, black mask - rushed down the aisle towards him, wielding a knife. His first thought- So it's you. Here you are. What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the world. Now, for the first time, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey towards physical recovery and the healing that was made possible by the love and support of his wife, Eliza, his family, his army of doctors and physical therapists, and his community of readers worldwide. Knife is Rushdie writing with urgency, gravity, and unflinching honesty. It is also a deeply moving reminder of literature's capacity to make sense of the unthinkable. This an intimate and life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art - and finding the strength to stand up again.

Reviews

Salman Rushdies memoir is horrific, upsetting and a masterpiece Knife is a tour-de-force, in which the great novelist takes his brutal near-murder and spins it into a majestic essay on art, pain and lovefull of Rushdies wit, his wisdom, his stoicism, his optimism, his love of all culture from the so-called high to the so-called low. -- Erica Wagner * Daily Telegraph *
Knife is a rich, immersive, feisty account of [Rushdie's] journey through darkness back to the light. Part thriller, part love story, part celebration of literature, its an incandescent book full of hair-raising descriptions of hard-won survival and beautiful, philosophical passages about art, freedom and resilienceRushdie has not just enlarged literatures capacities, he has expanded the worlds imaginative possibilities and he has paid a tremendous price for it. We owe him a huge debt of gratitude. -- Johanna Thomas Corr * The Times *
Rushdies triumph is not to be other: despite his terrible injuries and the threat he still lives under, he remains incorrigibly himself, as passionate as ever about art and free speech... At one point he quotes Martin Amis: When you publish a book, you either get away with it, or you dont. He has more than got away with this one. Its scary but heartwarming, a story of hatred defeated by love. -- Blake Morrison * The Guardian *
With both candour and rich detail, and reminding us again of his knack for storytelling, Knife celebrates art and love over violence, resilience over acquiescence * i, *Books to Look Out for 2024* *
Knife is a clarifying book. It reminds us of the threats the free world faces. It reminds us of the things worth fighting for. Rushdies friend Christopher Hitchens, in the wake of the initial fatwa, eloquently explained the stakes. The affair drew a line between everything I hated versus everything I loved, he wrote. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual and the defense of free expression. His words apply to this book. * New York Times *

Author Bio

Salman Rushdie is the author of fifteen previous novels, including Midnight's Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker), The Satanic Verses, and Quichotte (which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize). A former president of PEN American Center, Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature and was made a Companion of Honour in the Queen's last Birthday Honours list in 2022.