THE Edinburgh International Book Festival has reaffirmed its intent to provide a “safe space” while also standing up for freedom of speech, following last week’s attack on the writer Salman Rushdie.
In the aftermath of the stabbing of the 75-year-old author of Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verses at a speaking event in New York, EIBF organisers said that all guests at this year’s festival would be invited to begin their events by reading a sentence from one of Rushdie’s works “as a gesture of solidarity and support.”
