Salman Rushdie writing memoir on stabbing incident

Author Salman Rushdie will write a memoir on his 2022 stabbing in New York, book publisher Penguin Random House announced on Wednesday.

The book titled 'Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder' will be published on April 16, 2024, New York Times (NYT) said in a report, quoting the publisher.

The near-fatal knife attack on him in August last year left the Mumbai-born author blind in one eye, and working with a therapist to help him process the mental impact of the trauma.

"This was a necessary book for me to write: a way to take charge of what happened, and to answer violence with art," Rushdie said in a statement, as reported by NYT.

He had earlier told the BBC that the book won't be more than a "couple of hundred pages" long.

The Booker Prize-winning author was on stage at the Chautauqua Institution, a summer arts community in New York, when he was stabbed up to 10 times by the suspect Hadi Matar, who is being held in prison for attempted murder.

The injuries from the attack also resulted in damage to his liver and a paralysed hand caused by nerve damage to his arm.

He was put on a ventilator and spent six weeks in hospital after being stabbed.

The 76-year-old was awarded the 'Freedom to Publish' award by the British Book Awards in May.

Rushdie released a new novel, 'Victory City', nearly six months after his stabbing attack.

The author has spent much of his life under the threat of violence. After the publication of his novel 'The Satanic Verses', the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa in 1989 calling for Rushdie's death, and put a bounty on his head of $2.5 million.

Rushdie spent years in hiding due to the fatwa.

/KN/