April 13, 2023, 10:00am
Salman Rushdie is made of sturdy stuff indeed. After a brutal attack at a reading in upstate NY in the summer of 2022, the author has been slowly recovering from his wounds, though, he tells Time in a new interview, “the eye is not coming back. The eye is lost.”
In the conversation with Time’s Karl Vick, Rushdie said he is working on a new book, likely concerning some version of the vicious attack:
one of the things I am doing is finding a way to write about what happened. Whatever is published next is very likely to be a text about that. For me, that’s a way of kind of taking charge of it. I’m still working out exactly how it might go. I can’t say a lot about it, except that it’s my intention to do it and I’m working on it.
He also deprecatingly suggested that his last book, Victory City, was given favorable reviews out of pity; he couldn’t do publicity due to his injuries. (Sir! Your book did very well nonetheless.)
Rushdie also said that the road back to writing had been long due to PTSD and other hurdles:
For quite a long time after the attack, writing was something which I couldn’t do. Just wasn’t available to me. … I would try, but there was just nothing there. And in the end I didn’t try. That seems to be coming back. Like the rest of me.
[via Time]