Salman Rushdie: Author plans book about knife attack

Since the publication of his work “The Satanic Verses” in 1988, Salman Rushdie (75) has been persecuted by religious fanatics. On August 12, 2022, a young extremist stormed the stage during the writer’s lecture in New York, USA, severely stabbing him multiple times. Rushdie barely survived this brutal attack. After almost six weeks in the hospital, he was discharged with serious injuries, blind in one eye and with movement problems in his writing hand.

Happy about the positive response to his novel “Victory City”

Like , the author explained during a Zoom appearance at the Hay Festival of Literature & Arts in Wales, UK, that he is now doing well given the circumstances. He was also pleased with the positive response to his latest novel, Victory City, which he had finished before the attack. During the event, the newly recovered man received this year’s festival medal in the prose category for this work.

Next project: Literary trauma processing

When asked about his current literary projects, he surprised with the following statement: “I am trying to write a book about the attack on me – what happened and what it means, not only about the attack but also about it.” Before he can turn to other topics again, he first has to process the traumatic experience on a literary level.

“It will be a relatively short book, a few hundred pages,” the author described the planned work. “It’s not the easiest book in the world, but it’s something I have to get behind in order to do something else. I can’t really start writing an unrelated novel. So I just have to deal with it.”