Answering violence with art: Salman Rushdie’s response to the knife attack that almost killed him

Salman Rushdie called it his “unfunny Valentine”. On 14 February 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s supreme leader, issued a fatwa calling on Muslims around the world to kill the author and placing a multimillion-dollar bounty on his head. What had prompted this death sentence? The previous year, Rushdie released his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, a book that some Muslims considered to be blasphemous because of its fictionalised, sometimes satirical portrayal of the prophet Muhammad. The Ayatollah’s decree turned Rushdie’s life upside down instantly, forcing the celebrated writer into hiding for a decade. It has cast a long shadow ever since.

There are few books over which so much blood has been spilt as . In 1991, the book’s Japanese translator, Hitoshi Igarashi, was murdered; the Norwegian publisher and Italian translator were later viciously attacked. And in 2022, at a point when Rushdie was finally living what he called “a relatively normal” life, the writer was stabbed in a horrific attack on stage at a literary event and unable to use one of his hands. These injuries, though, haven’t held back the indomitable author from his work. This month sees the release of , a , which Rushdie has described as “a way to take charge of what happened, and to answer violence with art”.