Review of Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie

*Knife* by Salman Rushie (2024). Published by Random House.

If you’re new here and found this blog through the mysterious powers of the Internet, welcome! My name is Ashley, and I’m a dedicated reader and movie watcher who thought to turn this website into a little digital archive of sorts.

I was watching and reading so much that I wanted to keep track of it all, so I began blogging as a way to keep these books as memories somewhat forever.

That said, I recently fell into a period of unemployment, and this blog was a solace for me. Not only was it a way to make a little bit of money when there was nothing else coming my way really, but I found, after getting my finances in order, that I enjoyed sitting down to write blog posts when I had nothing else to do in my day.

If you like this review in the end, feel free to click around. This is my digital home, so I’m happy to have you here. This blog post is probably coming out a few months after I wrote it due to the sheer nature of the backlog I have right now.

Knife is one of those books that I’ve known about for a while. It’s not something that I was seeking out when it first was released, as I was in graduate school and crushed by the sheer amount of reading I had to do every day for that, but when I began realizing I was funemployed, I threw myself into my reading and movies while applying for jobs.

I saw the book was available on Libby one day when I was putting myself really into the grind of working and putting applications out there, as well as writing for myself and the blog, and I decided to check the book out. In graduate school I got through so many books by listening to them while I worked, and I surprisingly retain a lot when I do this.

It took about a week and a half to get through the audiobook of Knife. I have never read Rushie’s work before this, but maybe when I have some more free time in the future I’ll give it a chance.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to ramble too much in the introduction.

After the attempted assassination that left him blind in one eye, Salman Rushdie confronts what happened to him.

This is a book that splits itself into thirds, or that’s at least how I read it. I classify these thirds as before/during, after, and confronting the perpetrator in an imaginary conversation. Because this is how I read the book, I’m going to discuss it splitting it into these sections.

That said, the book begins with the lead up to the attack. This is actually how I found out that Rushdie is married to one of my favorite poets, Rachel Eliza Griffiths. He has quite a few words to say about their love and how cool he thinks she is, which, outside of the love aspect, I can agree that she’s so talented and an incredible artist.

Rushdie brings us into the world leading up to the attack, but as many people probably are looking for in this book is his firsthand account of what happened. He does describe the event and how the attacker rushed towards him, then spends a lot of time reflecting on the hospital and the reactions of the people around him.

We see how he has an extensive community that mobilized when he was attacked and in critical condition, as well as how his wife was able to get out there much quicker than expected in order to be by his side. Rushdie, who has been in hot water with many communities throughout the world because of his writing, has been a target for years, but one ever expected him to actually be attacked by someone.

A good chunk of the book is spent on these reflections. I find this to be a book for those interested directly in what’s going on in Rushdie’s head, especially as he talks about the long road to recovery. He was left blind in one eye because of the stabbing, and he spent quite a bit of time in the hospital.

Then we transition into the third arc of the book, in which Rushdie imagines himself in conversation with the attacker. If we’re going to be honest, I was not the biggest fan of this section of the book as a reader, but I could see how valuable it was in its inclusion.

Sometimes when we get into situations (but not as drastic as this), we imagine talking or speaking differently to the person it happened with. I could see how this was a form of healing for Rushdie throughout the course of the book, as he can get out what he has to say to the perpetrator and try to rationalize how this even happened.

Overall Thoughts

For me, I don’t think I was the target audience for this book, which probably explains how I spent a lot of time avoiding reading it for a while. I don’t agree with what happened to Rushdie at all, but I also think this is a book he created in order to heal himself from what happened.

There are some passages in this book that show Rushdie is very much in a privileged situation. Again: I don’t agree with what happened to him, even though the guy probably has a lot of money and could afford the treatment that he got, as well as talking about how expensive lifestyle. Most people would have either died or gone into severe debt if the same thing happened to them, especially with the state of the US medical system and how much it charges.

That said, I don’t think we should blame him for being of a higher social class, especially considering he gave up a lot in order to get there. I couldn’t imagine living with constant security and under the fear of something happening to me because of a fatwa.

All of this is to say that I feel this is very much a part of Rushdie’s healing process, and that maybe this didn’t need to be openly published. Rushdie is a brilliant writer and storyteller, that’s evident from the prose, but I’m just not the target audience. Someone else definitely is out there!

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