For the first time, Salman Rushdie speaks in an interview about the attack he suffered in 2022

The first thought that the writer Salman Rushdie (Bombay, 1947) had when he saw the face of the man who tried to kill him in 2022 in the state of New York was: Then it’s you. Here you are.

Two years after the incident, the author narrated that experience for the first time in an extensive interview broadcast that will be broadcast today on the program 60 Minutes from the American network CBS, regarding the book: Knife: Meditations after an assassination attempt, which will be released worldwide this Tuesday by the publisher Penguin Random House.

A preview of the interview was broadcast on the YouTube platform ( https://n9.cl/jeb2b ), where the novelist says: “After 18 days in the hospital and three weeks in rehabilitation, I was discharged. I admit that at times I had imagined my murderer rising up in some public forum and coming towards me in this way. So my first thought when I saw this killer silhouette running towards me was: ‘So it’s you. Here you are,’” he noted.

“One of the surgeons who saved my life told me: ‘First, you’ve been very unlucky, and then you’ve been very lucky.’ To which I asked him what the lucky part was. He replied, ‘Well, the lucky part is that the man who attacked you had no idea how to kill a man with a knife.’”

When asked if he believed in miracles, the author of Victory City (2023) pointed out: “it is a contradiction, because how does someone who does not believe in the supernatural explain that something that seems like a miracle has occurred? That is to say, I don’t believe that a hand came down from heaven to protect me, but I do believe that something that shouldn’t have happened, and I have no explanation for it.

“The last thing my right eye would ever see was a man dressed in black approaching strongly and crouching… like a missile.”

Penguin Random House called Rushdie’s memoir a “gripping, intimate, and ultimately affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art, and the search for the strength to rise again.”

“The internationally renowned and Booker Prize-winning writer offers a searing and deeply personal account of enduring (and surviving) an attempt on his life 30 years after the fatwa that was ordered against him,” the seal added.

Rushdie responds to violence with art and reminds us of the power of words to make sense of the unthinkable.

Outrage in the literary world

The attack against the novelist occurred on August 12, 2022, minutes before he was to chair a talk in the auditorium of the Chautauqua Institution, in the state of New York. Since then, the cultural community of the entire world expressed their indignation and even organized several vigils in his honor to share personal stories about him and also to read passages from his novels.

His wounds were deep and he lost sight in one eye. She had three serious cuts on her neck. One of her hands was incapacitated, because the nerves in her arm were severed, and she had about 15 other injuries to her chest and torso.declared Andrew Wylie, Rushdie’s agent, shortly after the incident.

The essayist also spent years in hiding after Iranian Ayatollah Ruhola Khomeini issued a fatwa in 1989 who called for his death after the publication of his novel The satanic verses, which deals with Islam in its origins, and even presents dream sequences that refer to the prophet Muhammad, which is why some Muslims cataloged the work of blasphemous.

Although the altercation caused shock in the West, it was praised by extremists in Muslim countries such as Iran and Pakistan. However, during the past two decades, the novelist traveled freely.

The subject accused of stabbing him, Hadi Matar (24-year-old Lebanese) was arrested immediately after the events and his trial remains on hold.

Rushdie has been awarded the Grinzane Cavour and the United States National Arts Award. In 2007, he was made a Knight of the British Empire for his contribution to literature. In addition, he is Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters and a member of the Royal Society of Literature, as well as a standard-bearer in the fight for freedom of expression.

Some of his most outstanding works are Midnight’s Children, The Moor’s Last Sigh, Joseph Anton y Quixote.