Salman Rushdie made a rare public appearance since he was stabbed and attacked at a literary event last year when the author collected an award on Wednesday night at the Václav Havel Center in New York.
It’s one of a handful of times that Rushdie has spoken in person at an event since he was hospitalized, and his surprise attendance was not publicized until the evening over concerns for his security. The New York police department was dispatched outside the venue.
“I apologize for being a mystery guest,” said Rushdie, appearing on stage at the annual “Living in Truth” ceremony while wearing a black button-up shirt and matching black suit. “I do not feel at all mysterious. It just made my life a little bit simpler.”
He received a standing ovation from the crowd.
Rushdie has written more than a dozen novels, including The Satanic Verses in 1988. That novel was banned in Iran as blasphemous, and a fatwa calling for his death was issued by the country’s then supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, which forced the writer into hiding.
Thirty-three years after the fatwa was issued Rushdie, 75, was seriously injured as he prepared to give a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York in August 2022. The author was in hospital for six weeks and sustained several wounds, losing vision in his right eye and the use of one hand.
Hadi Matar, the man accused of stabbing him, is set to stand trial on 8 January.
Rushdie attended the ceremony at the Bohemian National Hall on the Upper East Side to accept the event’s first ever lifetime disturbing the peace award. He accepted it from Azar Nafisi, the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran. A crowd of about 150 guests, consisting of journalists, diplomats, artists and more were in attendance.
Speaking on stage about his personal relationship with Václav Havel, the former president of the Czech Republic, who the event was honoring, Rushdie said: “Havel was a remarkable figure because he was able to be an artist at the same time as being an activist, and those things are not always easy to reconcile with each other.
“When I met him in Prague, I said: ‘Are you still able to write?’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m only able to write speeches.’ And he regretted that, but on the whole I think it was a tradeoff he was willing to make.”
The Václav Havel Center said in a press release beforehand that the author “exemplifies everything that the award stands for”.
“His forthright defense of freedom of expression emerges not only through his fiction, but also in the principled stances he takes in his trenchant commentaries and memoirs.”
Speaking earlier last month when he received the peace prize of the German book trade in Frankfurt, Rushdie said: “We are living in a time I did not think I would have to live in.
“It is a time when educational institutions and libraries face censorship and hostility.”
Appearing on stage in New York, Rushdie referenced this past event.
“Three weeks ago, I was awarded the peace prize and here I am receiving a disturbing peace prize. One of those things is definitely true. I’m not sure which one.”
The ceremony also honored the Egyptian political theorist and blogger Alaa Abd El-Fattah with the disturbing the peace award to a courageous writer at risk. The award was accepted by his aunt Ahdaf Soueif, who traveled to New York for this purpose. Fattah remains imprisoned in Egypt under what the Václav Havel Center calls “inhumane conditions”.
Soueif herself is an acclaimed author and was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1999 for her novel The Map of Love.
“We do visit Alaa, he is allowed family visits now once a month for 20 minutes,” she said on stage.
“We have told him about the award and he is very grateful. It’s tremendously important that people in prison are not forgotten.”
The CBS journalist Leslie Stahl was also honored for her foreign policy coverage on national television.
