‘I’m Getting There’: Salman Rushdie Opens Up About Writing After Knife Attack

The Mumbai-born Booker Prize winning author launched a new novel titled “Victory City” on Tuesday, 7 February.

Speaking to the New Yorker’s David Remnik, Rushdie said that the main feeling inside him was that of gratitude. 

(Photo: Altered by Pranay Dutta Roy/The Quint) 

Speaking for the first time since the “colossal attack," Mumbai-born Booker Prize winning author Salman Rushdie has said that he felt “lucky” to have survived last year’s brutal stabbing in the United States.

The author also launched a new novel titled “Victory City” on Tuesday, 7 February.

On 12 August 2022, the Indian-origin novelist was due to give a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in New York when a man stormed the stage and stabbed Rushdie in the neck and torso, causing loss of vision in one eye.

Speaking to the New Yorker’s David Remnik, Rushdie said that the main feeling inside him was that of gratitude, to those who showed their support since the incident and his family, including his sons Milan and Zafar.

On Monday, he also posted a photo of himself with one eye covered by a darkened lens on his glasses with the caption, "The photo in @NewYorker is dramatic and powerful but this, more personally, is what I actually look like."

(Photo: Twitter/ @SalmanRushdie) 

The Indian-born author Rushdie spent years in hiding after Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against him in 1989 because of his novel The Satanic Verses.

However, he let his guard down since 2000, choosing to settle in New York and live freely.

Authorities arrested 24-year-old Hadi Matar in connection to the assassination attempt and charged him with attempted second-degree murder and attempted second-degree assault, as the talk's moderator was also left injured. Matar pleaded not guilty to both charges.

Matar is thought to have been trying to carry out the three-decade old Fatwa issued by Iran’s first Supreme Leader, asking Muslims to kill Rushdie on account of his novel containing blasphemous passages, according to some members of the Muslim community.

Rushdie said that over the years, he has tried very hard to “avoid recrimination and bitterness.”

“I just think it's not a good look. One of the ways I've dealt with this whole thing is to look forward and not backward. What happens tomorrow is more important than what happened yesterday,” he added.

Asked if he felt if that decision was a mistake, he replied, "Well, I'm asking myself that question, and I don't know the answer to it. I did have more than 20 years of life. So, is that a mistake?"

"Also, I wrote a lot of books. 'The Satanic Verses' was my fifth published book - my fourth published novel - and this ['Victory City'] is my twenty-first. So, three-quarters of my life as a writer has happened since the fatwa. In a way, you can't regret your life."

Salman Rushdie

He told the American journalist that the “big injuries (from the attack in October 2022) are healed" but added that he was not able to type well because of a lack of sensation in some of his fingertips.

"I'm able to get up and walk around. When I say I'm fine, I mean, there are bits of my body that need constant checkups. It was a colossal attack," he said. Asked about his writing, he said, "I just write more slowly. But I’m getting there.”

Since the attack, Rushdie spent six weeks in the hospital, he told the New Yorker, but hoped that the attack would not overshadow his new novel.

His 15th novel, “Victoria City,” is published by Penguin Random House and is in the form of a translation of a mythical epic about the Vijaynagara Empire originally written in Sanskrit. It was penned by Rushdie before the attack.

"The first kings of Vijayanagara announced, quite seriously, that they were descended from the moon... It's like saying, 'I've descended from the same family as Achilles.' Or Agamemnon. And so, I thought, well, if you could say that, I can say anything," the author said.