Author Salman Rushdie, marking his return to the literary world after a violent attack last year that left him permanently injured, says he doesn’t want pity.
“I’ve always tried very hard not to adopt the role of a victim,” he said recently to New Yorker magazine editor David Remnick. The story marked the author’s first interview since he was stabbed.
His reappearance as a public figure also included a recent real-life visit to the New York City office his agent, Andrew Wylie, promotion for his new book, “Victory City,” completed before the stabbing, and a vow to eschew feelings of bitterness six months after the attack in western New York.
In 1989, Rushdie defied advice to lie low after Iran’s late supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, put a virtual contract on his life in response to his novel, “The Satanic Verses,” which many Muslims found blasphemous or at least outrageously irreverent.
Rushdie has also expressed little desire to embrace a recluse’s life following the midsummer violence at a public, outdoor discussion in Chautauqua, New York.
Yet Rushdie acknowledged the attack has caused him disruption and agony. Wylie has said Rushdie will not go on a book tour to promote the publication of “Victory City.”
The Aug. 12, 2022, violence unfolded quickly at the Chautauqua Institution, where Rushdie was seated onstage, awaiting the start of a discussion that was part of the Chautauqua Lecture Series.
A suspect dressed in black rushed the stage, and the author was stabbed multiple times, authorities said. Agent Wylie said afterward that Rushdie’s injuries, including a punctured eye, damaged liver, and severed nerves, would be “life-changing.”
He said the author would probably lose use of one eye, and today Rushdie wears glasses with a darkly tinted right lens in place of an eyepatch. Though Rushdie’s physiological recovery appears to be nearly completed, he indicated to the New Yorker his mind still needs time.
“I’ve found it very, very difficult to…
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