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Peter's choice for bookclub, it is amazing Salmon Rushdie lived through this attack. Highly recommend.

3.5/5 🌟

This is a straightforward and compelling retelling of his experience following an attempted murder. It's heartbreaking and shocking that he had to endure such a terrible ordeal.

'We would not be who we are today without the calamities of our yesterdays.'

As always it feels weird rating or even reviewing a memoir, not least one about such a traumatic event as this. I found Rushdie‘s account of the recent attack on his life, and its aftermath compelling, and moving reading. He‘s a quirky, interesting character, and I found this memoir generous in its vulnerability and honesty of its reflection. It was interesting too, to read about the long term impact of living with the fatwa of 1989.

Salman Rushdie was attacked by a young man with a knife at an event where Rushdie was to speak about keeping writers safe — over 30 years after the fatwa against him was issued. Here Rushdie tells us what he experienced during his incredible recovery.

It's been such a pleasure to listen to Salman Rushdie perform his beautiful prose the last few mornings on my walks. I particularly enjoyed the fictional interview with The A. -- I cackled, and loved the manipulation of language. I watched Mr. Rushdie's interview on The Daily Show about this book and I just love him and appreciate the way that he discusses this vicious attack, the fatwa, The Satanic Verses, and his fascinating life.

I've been rearranging the front room while listening to the tagged book all day and I'm pretty pleased with it (ignore the bernese mountain dog tail/butt... he's always in the way 🙄)

I have never read ‘The Satanic Verses‘, the infamous banned book which earned the author a fatwa, 6 assassination attempts, plus the 7th—which he recounts in this memoir. I cannot imagine wanting to kill someone because they wrote a book I don‘t like, or taking religion so seriously that I would feel this way. Rushdie survived 15 stabs in one night, in front of an audience. Those 27 seconds must have felt like an eternity. He was not ⬇️

And we—or, let me say more modestly say, I—have no need of commandments, popes, or god-men of any sort to hand down my morals to me. I have my own ethical sense, thank you very much. God did not hand down morality to us. We created God to embody our moral instincts.

During those empty sleepless nights, I thought a lot about The Knife as an idea. When the knife makes the first cut in a wedding cake, it is part of the ritual by which two people are joined together. A kitchen knife is an essential part of the creative act of cooking. A Swiss Army knife is a helper, able to perform many small but necessary tasks, such as opening a bottle of beer. Occam‘s razor is a conceptual knife, a knife of theory, that⬇️

The way the author describes a ventilator feeling like an armadillo tail in his throat…that‘s going to stick with me. I‘m used to seeing them as road kill all the time. Now, I‘m going to see them in some other universe being used as ventilators 🤣

I‘ll just say: we would not be who we are today without the calamities of our yesterdays.

I stood there in the moonlight for a while and let my mind run on moon-stuff.

~~~‘moon stuff‘. I love this description!
🌛🌜🌚🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑🌒🌓🌔🌙

Knife was easily my favorite read in July, Rushdie one of my all time favorite authors. Will have to think on which one comes out ahead with braiding sweet grass. #bookbracket2024 #readingbracket2024

#coverlove #weapon

I haven‘t read this one, but I‘ve heard it‘s good!

@Eggs @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

I admit I am already a fan of Rushdie, having been strongly impacted by reading Midnight‘s Children twenty years ago. I saw Rushdie speak in 2017 at the National Cathedral for the Pen first Eudora Welty lecture and was intrigued. But this Memoir brings the beauty and insight of his more complicated works to the telling and reckoning with the attack. I was astounded to be just as moved in this genre. The man is brilliant.

I would answer violence with art

We would not be who we are today without the calamities of our yesterdays.

The future came rushing toward him while he slept.

Salman Rushdie was attacked, stabbed 14 times, even once in the eye, and has lived to write about that incident. He describes the moments of terror, the aftermath and recovery, his family‘s reaction and, ultimately, his healing process. What I found the most surprising in this book was his imagined conversation with “A”, the assailant. This was a brave response to an act of terror committed against him, and I‘m so grateful to have read it.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Rushdie is a complicated human. Quite a prolific author, but weirdly, this was my first time reading him. A fatwa was placed on him in 1989 for alleged “blasphemy” in his controversial novel The Satanic Verses. Imagine living this way; always looking over your shoulder. Decades later, as he was on stage to give a talk, he was stabbed multiple times. This is a memoir of surviving near death. Incredibly written; raw and introspective.

As with those few works where the quality of the writing struck me as among the best I've encountered, I'm going to feel particularly clumsy using the same medium to express my admiration.
I agree this is a good place to start with Rushdie's work. Considering how much I loved it, I now look forward to trying his fiction. 1/?

When exactly...

It does not accept violence.

Annihilated by his own flesh and blood! 😂

Meet cute with injury. 🫣🥰

“moon-stuff“ 🌝
Today's 'scratched my brain just right' sentence.

Witty AND valid.

The attack on Rushdie I think hurt all of us. But he survived. And this is his response. That the book exists is important by itself. And I‘m glad I bought a copy (pre-ordered) and glad I read it. It‘s not the most profound book I‘ve ever read. But it‘s reflective and interesting and it‘s nice to hear his nonfictional voice.

(His wife took this photo. It‘s mentioned in the book.)

Unbelievably powerful. I‘m not a Rushdie super fan, because I haven‘t read all that much of his work, but was shocked and saddened when I learned of this attack. A lot of this resonated with me for personal reasons but even setting that aside, this was a remarkable portrait of physical and psychological healing.

This book is absolutely brutal.

Rushdie reflecting on the knife attack that came 30 years after the fatwa ordering Muslims to kill him. Felt heavy on medical info & self-regard, light on insight, but maybe insights hard to glean from violent acts both horrific & mundane? Sprinkled w/ literary references. Imagined convos with assailant felt therapeutic but off. 2024

P13 “Why didn‘t I act?”
P13 “The targets of violence experience a crisis in their understanding of the real.”

In Knife, Rushdie details his attack by a violent assailant and the aftermath, interspersed with some musings on life. This is an outstanding read. He doesn‘t hold back or mince words but it‘s also not a polemic but the words of a thoughtful (and surprisingly funny at times) man.

Happy Independent Bookstore Day! I visited four bookstores and managed to limit myself to one book per store!

Salman Rushdie is one of my all-time favorite authors, so when I turned on the news that morning in August of 2022, my heart sank to the floor. To see a voice like his attacked in that way was horrifying and I am thankful for his recovery and for his continued literary contributions. This was an incredibly powerful recounting of the event, and I was struck by how close he brought us into his emotional and physical states along the way.

Wow 🤩 wow 😮 wow 🤯

I was looking forward to the release of this book for quite a while, and it did NOT disappoint. I didn't care for the chapter in which he has an imaginary conversation with his attacker. Aside from that, this book is terrific. #2024Book16

Indeed.

When the faithful believe that what they believe must be forced upon others who do not believe it, or when they believe that nonbelievers should be prevented from the robust or humorous expression of their nonbelief, then there's a problem.

He's specifically referring to comments on Twitter, but overall, this is great advice.

I had close to twenty-three years in New York living a full, rich life. There were mistakes along the way, plenty of those, and things I could have done better, and I do regret those. But my life in general? I'm glad I have lived it, and I've tried to live it as well as possible.

"To regret what your life has been is the true folly, I told myself, because the person doing the regretting has been shaped by the life he subsequently regrets."

Virtual event with Salman Rushdie in conversation with Suleika Jaouad. I'm really looking forward to reading his new book!

"Happiness writes in white ink on white pages."

😅

😲😲😲