Salman Rushdie
Random House, 224 pages
Published April 16, 2024
Salman Rushdie was not expected to live. The 75-year-old author had, after all, been stabbed 27 times, in front of a Chautauqua Institution audience who had, ironically, gathered to hear Rushdie speak about the importance of protecting writers. Nearly two years later, Rushdie has lost an eye and partial use of one hand, but he is still at the top of his game as a writer and thinker. Knife is a memoir of sorts — certainly not a comprehensive look at Rushdie’s life and work, but a compelling series of thoughts inspired by his horrific attack.
Rushdie candidly admits that he wrote Knife because he could not write anything else until he had processed his attempted murder. And I’m grateful that he did. Rushdie’s very public attack raised so many questions: What motivated his assailant – a young man who was not even born when the Iranian Ayatollah issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s murder – to launch such a vicious pre-meditated attack? Why did the Chautauqua Institution fail to provide security for Rushdie’s event? What did audience members see and do as the attack unfolded? Is there any explanation for his survival, short of a miracle?
Rushdie also asks these questions. Though some are unanswerable, his creative attempt to make sense of the senseless makes for a satisfying read. Rushdie describes the attack in careful language, allowing it to unfold in real-time, slow motion, as we marvel both at his gifts as a writer and the heroics of his audience (who subdued his attacker and provided emergency medical care that saved Rushdie’s life). Most revealing of all is his imagined conversation with his assailant, who Rushdie has never met and who is expected to stand trial this fall. “I have to imagine my way into his head,” Rushdie writes, crafting a fictional dialogue that seeks to explain not just this attack, but the radicalization of young men who turn to YouTube for religious education and a sense of purpose.
Rushdie remains a determined atheist. He does not ask for our prayers, yet I pray that writing Knife provided the catharsis he needs to return to his joy-filled life with his adult children and wife (the poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths) … and, God-willing, to bless us with more of his work.
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