Sir Salman Rushdie: I have the power back after writing about knife attack

Southbank Centre’s Spring Literature and Spoken Word Season

Sir Salman Rushdie has said writing a book about his knife attack was a device to give him back “power” over his own life.

The 76-year-old Indian-born author lost sight in his right eye after the on-stage attack at the Chautauqua Institution in New York state.

He discussed his experience of suffering severe and life-changing injuries at a Southbank event on Sunday while promoting the memoir Knife: Meditations After An Attempted Murder, which was released on Tuesday.

Sir Salman, who was educated at Rugby School in Warwickshire and King’s College, Cambridge and lived for some of his life in the UK, spoke via video from his home in the US.

The Booker Prize-winning writer said: “I have a very good therapist who actually was helpful and who (I) had discussed this book with as I was doing it.

“So amongst the many things… it’s the only book I’ve ever written with the help of a therapist.

“But what it did do, I feel, is it gave me back control of the narrative. So instead of being a man lying on stage in a pool of blood, I’m a man writing a book about a man lying on the stage of the pool and that felt like (it) gave me back the power… (because it is now) my story that I’m telling in my way and that felt good.

“The power literature has is the power to describe events in a way that the books then own those events.”

He recalled the length of the incident, saying that 27 seconds is a “long time when someone has a knife” but said he never saw the weapon during the attack.

Recalling how he felt at the time, Sir Salman added: “There’s a very strange disconnect, which is that people who were there have said afterwards that I was making a lot of noise and (was) screaming with pain, (but) inside my head I was not aware of the pain, and I think something about deep shock takes over.

“I had a kind of approximate awareness of what was going on but not an exact one.”

Sir Salman also said that without the “pile of bodies” coming in to stop the attacker, he would not be alive and able to recover.

Following the attack in August 2022 in the small town of Chautauqua, Hadi Matar was charged with attempted murder and assault.

The 24-year-old from New Jersey is awaiting trial and has pled not guilty.

Since the publication of The Satanic Verses, about the life of the prophet Muhammad, which is considered blasphemous by some Muslims, Sir Salman has faced death threats and attempts on his life.

Copies of the novel were publicly burnt on the streets of Bradford, West Yorkshire and in 1989, Iran’s former ruler Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Sir Salman’s death.

Support for the death sentence was withdrawn in 1998 by the Iranian government.

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