‘I can’t explain it’: Salman Rushdie says his survival in knife attack was a miracle

Author Salman Rushdie, who was blinded in one eye during a knife attack in August 2022. Photograph: Arne Dedert/AP

Salman Rushdie has revealed an abiding sense that his survival after a brutal knife attack two years ago was a miracle, in spite of his lack of spiritual faith. “I do feel that something happened that was not supposed to happen and I have no explanation for it,” Rushdie said this weekend before the publication of Knife, his account of the incident.

“I certainly don’t feel that some hand reached down from the sky and guarded me,” but it still presents a contradiction, he admits, “for one who doesn’t believe.”