He is a survivor of life. On August 12, 2022, at 10:45 a.m., the Anglo-American novelist Salman Rushdie meets with a thousand spectators to debate a subject he knows like the back of his hand: “Protecting writers in exile”, being himself an exile. As he is about to speak, an individual masked in black rushes towards him. He stabs him fifteen times with a knife and pierces his right eye.
Salman Rushdie miraculously escaped with a blind eye and incapacity in one hand. However, the violence of this attack was such that the writer today suffers from post-traumatic stress and is still not ready to meet his readers.
So, to try to overcome his constant anxieties, Salman Rushdie, 75, wrote his testimony, in which he recounts his convalescence after this assassination attempt. The knife (The Knife in original version), this is the title of the work, will be available in bookstores from this Thursday, April 18.
Words in response to violence
For almost a year, Salman Rushdie was brooding, suffering from nightmares. Then, he decided to tell his story, as he confides in his book: “I decided to welcome what happened, and to respond to violence with art (…) Language is my own knife.”
The author tells how, overnight, he became the target of numerous attacks: in total, six foiled, until the tragedy of August 12, 2022. The cause? The publication in February 1989 of his controversial book entitled Satanic verses, And in which he is accused of slandering the Prophet Mohammed. Since the publication of this work, a bounty of 3 million dollars has been promised to the individual who will execute the writer.
In his misfortune, Salman Rushdie was lucky
The perpetrator of this knife attack is Hadi Matar, 26 years old. Today, this American of Lebanese origin continues to assert his innocence. If found guilty, he faces twenty-five years in prison. According to the surgeon who treated Salman Rushdie after the attack, the writer’s life was hanging by a thread and he was lucky despite the seriousness of the situation. Indeed, Hadi Matar “had no idea how to kill a man with a knife.”
This individual’s trial was originally scheduled for January 8, 2024, but the date was moved due to the publication of the book The knife. The reason ? As recalled Le Figaro, The court-appointed lawyer considers that this work constitutes potential evidence and that it is within his right that he and his client can read it. For the moment, no new trial date has been communicated.
