Writer Salman Rushdie Recalls The Chilling Attack in His Memoir Knife

Booker Prize winning author, Salman Rushdie, has chronicled the spine chilling attack on him when he was about to give a talk at the Chautauqua Institution in his new memoir.

It was in August 2022, when Mumbai born author Salman Rushdie, was stabbed on the stage by then 24 year old Hadi Matar. Salman Rushdie was stabbed 12 times by the accused whilst the vicious attack lasted twenty seven seconds.

He was invited to Chautauqua to speak about a topic he was pretty familiar with: “ The importance of protecting writers whose lives are under threat.”

“Why didn't I fight? Why didn't I run? I just stood there like a pinata and let him smash me,” he writes in his memoir Knife . “It didn't feel dramatic, or particularly awful. It just felt probable... matter-of-fact.”

In an interview with the BBC, the author said that he thought he would die. His left eye hung down his face “like a soft-boiled egg”.

“It felt like something coming out of the distant past and trying to drag me back in time, if you like, back into that distant past, in order to kill me.”

“I think he was just slashing wildly at everything. So, there was a very big slash across my neck and stab wounds down by the middle of my torso and two to the side, and then there was the wound in my eye, which was quite deep. It looked terrible. I mean, it was very distended, swollen, and it was kind of hanging out of my face, sitting on my cheek like a soft-boiled egg, and I am blind,” he recalls. He lost his right eye.

In the memoir, he hasn’t used the attacker’s name, not even once! The accused Hagi Matar has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and is now awaiting trial.

Ironically, two days prior to the chilling attack, the author had a dream that he would be attacked in an amphitheatre.

The loss of his eye upsets him everyday and writing this memoir was a way to deal with the pain.The author admits that the incident has left a shadow in his life. “Some days it's dark and some days it's not”, he expresses.

“I just feel more the presence of death.”

The controversial writer has particularly been under the scanner since his 1988 novel ‘The Satanic Verses’ got published. Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini declared the novel as blasphemous. He called for the writer’s assasination. Soon the author had to go into hiding. Eventually, Rushdie regained his freedom and became an advocate for freedom of speech.

Salman Rushdie’s memoir is published by Jonathan Cape. Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder releases today, April 16.