Salman Rushdie to release 'Knife' memoir recounting stabbing

NEW YORK - British-American author Salman Rushdie releases his memoir "Knife" on Tuesday, recounting the harrowing experience of being stabbed at a public event in 2022 and how he overcame the near-fatal ordeal.

Rushdie lost sight in one eye after the attack by a knife-wielding assailant, who jumped on stage at an arts gathering in New York state.

The Indian-born author, a naturalized American based in New York, has faced death threats since his 1988 novel "The Satanic Verses" was declared blasphemous by Iran's supreme leader.

In an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" program, clips of which were released ahead of its Sunday broadcast, Rushdie recounted how one of the surgeons who saved his life had said: "First you were really unlucky and then you were really lucky."

"I said, 'What's the lucky part?' and he said, 'Well, the lucky part is that the man who attacked you had no idea how to kill a man with a knife,'" Rushdie said in one excerpt.

The knife attack "was a pretty harsh and sharp reminder" of the fatwa issued against him, he said in October 2023 at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world's biggest publishing trade event.

Rushdie added the attack was "somewhat surprising" as "the temperature had cooled off."

"I'm just happy to still be here to say so. It was a close thing." 

The award-winning author was stabbed multiple times in the neck and abdomen at the New York literary conference before attendees and guards subdued the assailant.

His attacker, an American in his 20s with roots in Lebanon, told the New York Post newspaper that he had only read two pages of Rushdie's novel but believed he had "attacked Islam."

Over the years, Rushdie had received a multitude of death threats that made him into a global symbol of freedom of speech.