Salman Rushdie pens memoir on knife attack that wounded him

Controversial writer Salman Rushdie plans to release a memoir about the knife attack that left him blinded in one eye and damaged his hand. The 256-page work is called Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, scheduled to be published April 16 by Penguin Random House in the United States. The attack occurred in August 2022 at the Chautauqua Institution in New York. Police say that as Rushdie was about to give a lecture, Hadi Matar rushed the stage and stabbed Rushdie several times in the neck and abdomen. Matar is charged with assault and attempted murder and has pleaded not guilty.

What books has Rushdie written? Rushdie has written 15 books. One of his most famous—and controversial—works is his novel The Satanic Verses. The year after it was published in 1989, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or Islamic legal decree, calling for Rushdie’s death. In 2012, Rushdie wrote Joseph Anton about the time he spent in hiding after the fatwa. His most recent book, Victory City, was published in February.

Dig Deeper: Read Jill Nelson’s article in World Magazine about the fatwa against Salman Rushdie.