October 11, 2023, 11:03am
As reported by Publishers Weekly earlier this morning, Random House will publish Salman Rushdie’s new memoir, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, on April 16, 2024.
The book will mark Rushdie’s first time speaking at length about the brutal attack he suffered while onstage at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York in August of last year. As he was about to deliver a lecture about the United States as a safe haven for exiled writers, a 24-year-old man rushed the stage and stabbed Rushdie ten times in the face and abdomen.
Rushdie was seriously injured, placed temporarily on a ventilator, and ultimately left blind in his right eye.
“This was a necessary book for me to write,” said Rushdie in a statement, “a way to take charge of what happened, and to answer violence with art.”
“Knife is a searing book, and a reminder of the power of words to make sense of the unthinkable,” Nihar Malaviya, the chief executive of Penguin Random House, wrote in a statement. “We are honored to publish it, and amazed at Salman’s determination to tell his story, and to return to the work he loves.”