Salman Rushdie has stated that his first thought upon seeing the person who would stab him on stage in August 2022 was: “So it’s you.Right here you might be.”

“It felt like one thing popping out of the distant previous and making an attempt to pull me again in time, when you like, again into that distant previous, in an effort to kill me,” stated the Indian-born British-American creator of books together with The Satanic Verses and Midnight’s Kids.

Rushdie was about to present a chat on the Chautauqua Establishment in New York state on 12 August 2022 when a person rushed on stage and stabbed him about 10 instances.

“I used to be seated at stage proper,” stated Rushdie, studying from his forthcoming memoir concerning the assault, titled Knife: Meditations After an Tried Homicide.“Then, within the nook of my proper eye – the very last thing my proper eye would ever see – I noticed the person in black working towards me down the right-hand aspect of the seating space.Black garments, black face masks.He was coming in arduous and low.A squat missile.

“I confess, I had typically imagined my murderer rising up in some public discussion board or different, and coming for me in simply this fashion.So my first thought once I noticed this murderous form speeding in direction of me was, ‘So it’s you.Right here you might be.’”

After the assault, Rushdie remained in hospital for six weeks.

He misplaced imaginative and prescient in a single eye and feeling in some fingertips.“One of many surgeons who had saved my life stated to me, ‘First you had been actually unfortunate and then you definitely had been actually fortunate’.I stated, ‘What’s the fortunate half?’ and he stated ‘Properly, the fortunate half is that the person who attacked you had no thought easy methods to kill a person with a knife’,” Rushdie

told Anderson Cooper on CBS’s 60 Minutes in his first tv interview because the assault (because of be broadcast in full on Sunday at 7pm Jap US time, midnight BST).

The assault got here 33 years after Iran’s then chief, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s demise within the aftermath of the publication of The Satanic Verses, which was deemed blasphemous.

The alleged attacker, Hadi Matar, pleaded not responsible to costs of second-degree tried homicide and second-degree assault.He has been held with out bail since his arrest instantly after the assault.

In January, Matar’s trial was delayed due to the forthcoming memoir, which is because of be printed on Tuesday.A lawyer representing Matar argued they had been entitled to see the memoir and any associated materials earlier than his shopper stood trial, as it could represent proof.

In June final yr, Rushdie introduced he was engaged on the memoir throughout a pre-recorded Zoom look at Hay pageant.Knife, which is printed by Penguin and runs to 224 pages, is the primary guide Rushdie has written because the assault.“This was a mandatory guide for me to put in writing: a solution to take cost of what occurred, and to reply violence with artwork,” he stated.

Rushdie’s newest novel, Victory Metropolis, was printed in February 2023, although it was written earlier than the assault.He beforehand printed a memoir in 2012, titled Joseph Anton, about his time in hiding after the publication of The Satanic Verses.

Rushdie has written 15 novels and plenty of works of nonfiction.

He has been shortlisted for the Booker prize 5 instances, profitable the award in 1981 for Midnight’s Kids.The guide additionally received the Booker of Bookers in 1994 and the Better of the Booker in 2008, to mark the twenty fifth and fortieth anniversaries of the prize..