Months after being stabbed repeatedly as he prepared to deliver a lecture, Salman Rushdie is blind in his right eye, struggles to write and at times has “frightening” nightmares
Rushdie was on stage when approached by a young man dressed in black and carrying a knife. Thehas pleaded not guilty to charges of assault and attempted murder. During his New Yorker interview, Rushdie referred to Matar as an"idiot," but otherwise said he felt no anger.
“I’ve tried very hard over these years to avoid recrimination and bitterness,” he said. “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 backwards. What happens tomorrow is more important than what happened yesterday.” The interview came out on the eve of the publication of Rushdie's new novel, “Victory City,” which he completed a month before he was attacked. Featuring a protagonist who lives to be 247, “Victory” is a characteristically surreal and exuberant narrative about an imagined ancient poem that has received highly favorable reviews, with The Washington Post's Ron Charles writing that “Rushdie’s magical style unfurls wonders.” Rushdie had been silent for months on social media, but now tweets on occasion and even responds to insults. When a tweeter last week told him he was living a “disgraceful life,” Rushdie answered, “Oh, another fan! So pleased.” During his interview, he noted ruefully that sales for his book had soared after the stabbing, as if he were more popular when in danger. “Now that I’ve almost died, everybody loves me,” he said."That was my mistake, back then. Not only did I live but I tried to live well. Bad mistake. Get 15 stab wounds, much better.”of himself, staring directly into the camera lens — his face thinner than in photos from before the stabbing, his right eye covered by a dark lens in his glasses frame. He is otherwise still trying to recover. Rushdie has written that he initially had difficulty writing fiction after the fatwa, and he is having a hard time now, saying that he will sit down to work and “nothing happens," just a “combination of blankness and junk.”which he wrote in the third person. “This doesn’t feel third-person-ish to me,” Rushdie said of a possible sequel. “I think when somebody sticks a knife into you, that’s a first-person story. That’s an ‘I’ story.” Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.