In “Knife,” Salman Rushdie’s first book since the 2022 stabbing that nearly took his life and left him blind in one eye, the author immediately recounts the day he thought might be his last.
The memoir, published on Tuesday, opens with Rushdie describing the attack that occurred just as he was about to give a talk on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York.
At just over 200 pages, “Knife” is a relatively brief work compared to Rushdie’s other novels, known for their exuberance and expansiveness.
It is also his first memoir since “Joseph Anton,” published in 2012, which recounted the fatwa, or death decree, issued against him more than 20 years earlier by Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini due to the alleged blasphemy in Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses.”
Initially forced into hiding and living under constant protection, Rushdie had seemingly moved past the threat and had been enjoying a life of travel, social engagement, and creative freedom, as evident in the promotional cycles for his recent novels “Quichotte” and “Victory City.”
In “Knife,” Rushdie notes that while he had sometimes imagined his “public assassin” appearing, the timing of the 2022 attack felt not only startling but also “anachronistic,” as if a “murderous ghost from the past” had returned to settle an old score.
Despite the blunt and horrifying descriptions of the attack, “Knife” is as remarkable for its shared spirit with Rushdie’s other books as it is for the way it chronicles the event that did, and did not, change his life.
The author praises the physical courage of event moderator Henry Reese, who grabbed the assailant, but also demonstrates another kind of heroism: the hope, determination, and humor in the face of trauma.
“Knife” documents Rushdie’s journey from lying in his own blood to returning to the same stage 13 months later, ultimately attaining a state of “wounded happiness.”
The Associated Press contributed to this article.