Salman Rushdie, Knife review: Author’s moving, sardonic memoir is not for the squeamish
Salman Rushdie’s Knife is not for the squeamish. Describing in detail the horrific attack by Hadi Matar on 12 August 2022, the 76-year-old Indian-born British-American author recalls that his “ruined eye” was “hugely distended, bulging out of its socket and hanging down on my face like a large soft-boiled egg”.
Rushdie was, we now know, stabbed 15 times in 27 seconds (in the right eye, neck, left hand, liver, abdomen, face, forehead, cheeks, mouth and chest) while on stage at the Chautauqua Institution in New York State, where he was due to deliver a lecture, as he says in the opening sentence of his new memoir, “about the importance of keeping writers safe from harm”.
The book, subtitled , contains newsworthy revelations, including that he was so “transfixed” by the sight of his oncoming attacker that he made no attempt to flee or fight him off; that two days before the assault, Rushdie had experienced a premonitionary nightmare about being in a gladiatorial arena where
