Salman Rushdie
ZDF broadcasts the Peace Prize ceremony
Salman Rushdie has been blind in one eye since a knife attack.
© imago/UPI Photo
Author Salman Rushdie will be awarded the German Book Trade Peace Prize this week. The ceremony will be broadcast live on ZDF.
The author of the book “The Satanic Verses” is a “passionate advocate of freedom” and as such has earned this recognition. “This means a lot to me because it is a very important prize,” Rushdie is quoted as saying. He goes on to say that he never dreamed that one day he would receive this award himself. “Just looking at the list of prize winners is inspiring. Everyone knows the Peace Prize.”
Rushdie wants to “respond to violence with art”
Since his 1988 book “The Satanic Verses,” radical Islamists have been seeking the author’s life. In August 2022, Rushdie was the victim of a life-threatening knife attack. He was seriously injured during a lecture in New York State. Since then, Rushdie has been blind in one eye. The author has processed the attack in a new book entitled “Knife. Thoughts after an attempted murder” and will be published on April 16, 2024 in more than 15 countries, including Germany.
“It was necessary for me to write this book: it is my way of coming to grips with what happened and responding to violence with art,” Rushdie was quoted as saying in a recent statement from Penguin Publishing. According to Nihar Malaviya, CEO of Penguin Random House, it is “a powerful book and a reminder of the power of words to make sense of the unthinkable.”