Description

**Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2024**

A gripping account of survival and recovery from internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize-winner Salman Rushdie

On the morning of 12 August 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black – black clothes, black mask – rushed down the aisle towards him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are.

What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey towards physical recovery and the healing that was made possible by the love and support of his wife, Eliza, his family, his army of doctors and physical therapists, and his community of readers worldwide.

Knife is Rushdie writing with urgency, gravity, and unflinching honesty. It is also a deeply moving reminder of literature’s capacity to make sense of the unthinkable.

This an intimate and life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art – and finding the strength to stand up again.

Publisher Review

With both candour and rich detail, and reminding us again of his knack for storytelling, Knife celebrates art and love over violence, resilience over acquiescence * i, *Books to Look Out for 2024* * Joseph Anton is a splendid book, the finest new memoir to cross my desk in many a year… The length of the book, and its wealth of quotidian detail, serve to draw the reader into the life that Rushdie was forced to lead, to make his isolation and fear palpable * Washington Post * Rushdie has the power of description, and we succumb * The Times * The literary map of India is about to be redrawn… Midnight’s Children sounds like a continent finding its voice * New York Times * Salman Rushdie is a storyteller of prodigious powers, able to conjure up whole geographies, causalities, climates, creatures, customs, out of thin air * New York Times Book Review *