literature
Literary reckoning after attempted murder: Rushdie’s “Knife”
Salman Rushdie narrowly escaped with his life after a knife attack. Now he strikes back with the sharpest weapon he has as a writer: a captivating story.
There are 33 years between Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini’s infamous fatwa against Salman Rushdie and a near-fatal assassination attempt on the writer.
On August 12, 2022, a 24-year-old man stabbed and critically injured the Indian-born British-American author at an event in the USA. The now 76-year-old survived, but lost his right eye and suffered other serious injuries. Today the book “Knife – Thoughts after an Attempted Murder” is published, in which Rushdie deals with the assassination attempt and its consequences.
Rushdie provides deep insights into his private life
On 255 pages, the master storyteller, who became famous with his novel “Midnight Children” in 1981 and whose book “The Satanic Verses” earned him the Ayatollah’s call for murder in 1989, reports largely chronologically about the crime and his healing process as well as the people who helped him along the way Have helped.
He provides deep insights into his private life, his circumstances and his family. The otherwise cantankerous Rushdie shows his vulnerable side. One thing becomes very clear: the attack on his life, so many years after he had already thought he was safe, has shaken him deeply – but not broken him.
Fictional conversation with the assassin
He also devotes a whole chapter to the assassin, but he doesn’t mention him by name, only letting him appear as A. (short for asshole). Rushdie is downright disappointed by the man’s poor justification for the crime, saying his victim was a “dishonest person.” He seems almost offended that the assassin awaiting trial has only leafed through his works and hardly seems to know anything about him. Rushdie engages in a fictitious dialogue with A. in which he wants to explore his Islamist motive and refute it with arguments.
“Knife”, although not fictional, reads like a typical Rushdie novel, only this time it is the writer himself, born in Bombay (now Mumbai), who immerses himself in a magical-realistic world, one with an almost supernatural quality Powerful beauty – the US poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths – falls in love and struggles with evil, small-minded forces. Even the knife has its say: “I’ve been waiting for you. Do you see me? I’m right in front of your eyes, sinking my assassin’s sharpness into your neck. Can you feel it?” he lets it whisper.
“As if my penis was begging for mercy”
The first look in the mirror at the face disfigured by the knife stabs becomes a journey into a childhood marked by painful experiences with an alcoholic father. “Who are you?” he asks the figure in the mirror. Have we ever met?” Then he is drawn into a parallel world in which memories from the past appear dimly.
Returning to life is difficult. But Rushdie reports small progress and setbacks in his recovery process with humor as only Rushdie can. For example, when he describes how a urinary catheter was placed in him: “It sounded as if my penis was whimpering for mercy.”
Who is Salman Rushdie?
But the book is also a self-reflection on who Salman Rushdie is. The answer to that is that there are several versions of him, at least in the public eye. There is an “arrogant, selfish Rushdie” who, through his own fault, put himself in danger with the “Satanic Verses,” at least according to the British tabloid press.
He himself denies this. Then there is a “party animal” who allegedly never missed a cocktail event despite death threats. This too was invented by the press. Finally, there is the icon of freedom of expression Rushdie, who has been celebrated all over the world, especially since the assassination attempt.
He himself would like to see himself judged by his entire literary work, but admits that this hope has been significantly dampened by the assassination attempt. “If fate has turned me into some kind of virtuous, freedom-loving Barbie doll, a Rushdie of freedom of expression, then I want to accept that fate,” he sums up.