This is a book, says Salman Rushdie, that he’d much rather not have needed to write. And no wonder. It’s an account of the 27-second attack on him by a young Lebanese-American Islamist on August 12, 2022, which very nearly killed him. The attacker stabbed him repeatedly, in the neck, liver, chest, eye. His right eye is gone forever. Knife is dedicated to those who saved his life.
Yet it’s not, of course, just an account of the attack itself, at a festival at Chautauqua Institution near Buffalo to celebrate — hah — a safe refuge for writers under threat. But that is terrifying in its vivid detail.
