Salman Rushdie was 75 years old in 2022 – and so was I. So when, in the first pages of his newly released book, Knife, he asks himself the question, “Why didn’t I act?”, possible answers are given. But I didn’t feel like I needed “possible answers” I felt like I knew the answer for Rushdie. I understood that he was in shock and unable to move; He just watched his young, male attacker stride down the aisle and jump forward. Rushdie was thinking that this was his own final act; he was living out a dream, replaying a fear and so he was in shock when the blade went through his skin several times. 

Knife:
Meditations After an Attempted Murder  
By Salman Rushdie
2024 / 6h 22m
Read by author
Rating 10 / memoir 

He says this was his “last innocent evening,” but he’d just been through 20 years of fatwa, hiding and being hidden and using a fake name. Still – August 11, 2021,  was the day he was knifed at a public gathering in an actual assassination attempt. 

I’ve been a Rushdie fan since finally reading The Satanic Verses in 1998 or so – after the hype had died down. . I know I didn’t read it until well into the 21st century. Then, when I took the plunge, I did a double-dip, back-to-back thing. It’s such an excellent book!   (But that review was on my old blog.) 

Now I read his books pretty much as they’re released.  I’ve read about a dozen total.  It’s quite an oeuvre and Knife is a wonderful nonfiction retelling of the day Rushdie’s eye was cut out by a terrorist who had come to see and hear him at the Chautauqua auditorium in upstate New York. It made no difference to “A” (Rushdie’s name for him) that it was 20 years since the Ayatollah Khomeini had issued the fatwa.  

I read Rushdie’s memoir, Jacob Anton, about how Rushdie spent those years in hiding because it seemed there were hordes of Muslims looking to kill him for the crime of depicting a fictionalized and sacrilegious version of Muhammed and his life.  I know when he went anywhere there were security problems and usually large expenses for the countries involved or for Rushdie himself. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabbing_of_Salman_Rushdie

One of the best parts of this book (I think) was Rushdie’s mentioning all the books which he was inspired by or just remembered as he lived this drama and wrote the narrative for it.  

Enjoy