Summary of Knife by Salman Rushdie:Meditations After an Attempted Murder

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This book does not in any capacity mean to replace the original book but to serve as a vast summary of the original book.

Summary of Knife by Salman Rushdie: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

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Salman Rushdie's memoir, Knife, is a poignant and intimate exploration of his life, highlighting the power of art in addressing traumatic events and the importance of love and strength in overcoming adversity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookRix
• Release date: Apr 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9783755474838

Book preview

PART ONE

The Angel of Death

Knife

On August 12, 2022, the author was attacked and almost killed by a young man with a knife just after coming out on stage at the amphitheater in Chautauqua, New York. The author was with Henry Reese, co-creator of the City of Asylum Pittsburgh project, which offers refuge to writers whose safety is at risk in their own countries. The author was part of a week of events at the Chautauqua Institution titled More Than Shelter: Redefining the American Home.

The author had been at the event with Henry and Diane Samuels, who were inspired to make Pittsburgh an asylum city. They funded a small house and sponsored a Chinese poet, Huang Xiang, who covered the exterior walls of his new home with a poem in large white-painted Chinese letters. The author was happy to be in Chautauqua to celebrate their achievement.

However, the author didn't know that their would-be killer was already present on the grounds of the Chautauqua Institution. He entered using a false ID, constructed out of the real names of well-known Shia Muslim extremists. The author's would-be killer did not inform himself about the attack, as he read barely two pages of his writing and watched a couple of YouTube videos of him.

On August 12, the author met Haitian poet Sony Ton-Aime, Chautauqua's Michael I. Rudell Director of Literary Arts, and they walked through the hotel lobby and into the backstage area of the amphitheater. The author was handed an envelope containing their speaking fee before going on stage.

The author recounts a vivid dream about being attacked by a gladiator in a Roman amphitheater, which he had experienced twice before. He was woken up by his wife, Eliza, just in time for the event at Chautauqua, an amphitheater. The author, who had spoken at Chautauqua once before, recalls the cozy atmosphere of the Chautauqua Institution, where liberal-minded people lived in comfortable wooden homes.

The author's last innocent night in Chautauqua was spent alone, wrapped in the moonlight, reflecting on the idea that lunar deities had descended from the satellite to Earth. He thought about the apocryphal story of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon and muttering Good luck, a joke about Neil Armstrong's encounter with the Gorskys, and the story The Distance of the Moon by Italo Calvino. He also thought about Tex Avery's cartoon Billy Boy, about the little goat that ate the moon.

The author's imagination is free-associative, as it works in a way that allows it to imagine the past and the present. The author's dream of being attacked by a gladiator in a Roman amphitheater is not the first time he has had such a vivid dream, but the event at Chautauqua is a reminder of the lost and forgotten aspects of the past.

The author recalls Georges Méliès's silent film Le Voyage dans la Lune, which depicts the first men to reach the moon. The author recalls the scene where the happy man by the lake is in mortal danger, unaware of the danger he is in. This is a literary device known as foreshadowing, as seen in One Hundred Years of Solitude. The author's life is changed by the shadow of the future, but they cannot warn themselves. The past rushes at them, but the author's past is rushing at them, a masked man with a knife, seeking to carry out a death order from three decades ago.

The author questions