{"product_id":"knife-isbn-9780593730256","title":"Knife","description":"\u003cb\u003eNATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply personal account of enduring—and surviving—an attempt on his life thirty years after the fatwa that was ordered against him\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, Time, \u003c\/i\u003eNPR, \u003ci\u003eTown \u0026amp; Country, New York Post,\u003c\/i\u003e Chicago Public Library, \u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn the morning of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage at the Chautauqua Institution, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black—black clothes, black mask—rushed down the aisle toward him, wielding a knife. His first thought: \u003ci\u003eSo it’s you. Here you are.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eWhat followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey toward physical recovery and the healing that was made possible by the love and support of his wife, Eliza, his family, his army of doctors and physical therapists, and his community of readers worldwide.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e Knife\u003c\/i\u003e is Rushdie at the peak of his powers, writing with urgency, with gravity, with unflinching honesty. It is also a deeply moving reminder of literature’s capacity to make sense of the unthinkable, an intimate and life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art—and finding the strength to stand up again.“Candid, plain-spoken and gripping . . . \u003ci\u003eKnife\u003c\/i\u003e is a clarifying book. It reminds us of the threats the free world faces. It reminds us of the things worth fighting for.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e“Knife\u003c\/i\u003e isn’t so much about pondering imminent death than it is an affirmation—an insistence—on returning to life.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The subject—the idea for which Rushdie nearly died—is the freedom to say what he wants . . . Rushdie survived, but he has too many scars to be certain that the idea will. This book is his way of fighting back.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Atlantic\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A brave and beautiful book that tells his story with a cathartic relish, no gruesome detail spared . . . this book is as much a love letter to his wife—the poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths—as it is a punch-back at his assailant.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSalman Rushdie’s memoir is horrific, upsetting—and a masterpiece . . . \u003ci\u003eKnife \u003c\/i\u003eis a tour-de-force, in which the great novelist takes his brutal near-murder and spins it into a majestic essay on art, pain and love . . . full of Rushdie’s wit, his wisdom, his stoicism, his optimism, his love of all culture.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eDaily Telegraph\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eKnife\u003c\/i\u003e is in part about—and in some sense itself \u003ci\u003eis\u003c\/i\u003e—a battle between the two most prominent Rushdies: Great Writer and Great Man, artist and advocate, private person and public figure . . . Contains some of the most precise, chilling prose of his career.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eVulture\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e“\u003c\/i\u003eNot just a candid and fearless book but—against all odds—a defiantly witty one . . . A ‘reckoning’, if not quite a catharsis, Rushdie’s invigorating dispatch from (almost) the far side of death’s door names and limits the attack as ‘a large red ink blot.’”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Financial Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Rushdie’s triumph is not to be other: despite his terrible injuries and the threat he still lives under, he remains incorrigibly himself, as passionate as ever about art and free speech.”\u003cb\u003e—The Guardian\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eKnife\u003c\/i\u003e is testament to Rushdie’s convictions and to the sustaining power of love as he focuses on the suffering and support of his family and his wife, writer and artist Rachel Eliza Griffiths, during this ordeal . . . every electrifying page elicits tears and awe.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A graceful meditation on life and death that captures Rushdie at his most observant and lyrical.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eSalman Rushdie\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of fifteen novels—\u003ci\u003eLuka and the Fire of Life\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eGrimus\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eMidnight’s Children\u003c\/i\u003e (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker); \u003ci\u003eShame\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eThe Satanic Verses\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eHaroun and the Sea of Stories\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eThe Moor’s Last Sigh\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eThe Ground Beneath Her Feet\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eFury\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eShalimar the Clown\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eThe Enchantress of Florence\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eTwo Years, Eight Months, and Twenty-Eight Nights\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eThe Golden House; Quichotte \u003c\/i\u003e(which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize); and \u003ci\u003eVictory City\u003c\/i\u003e—and one collection of short stories: \u003ci\u003eEast, West\u003c\/i\u003e. He has also published five works of nonfiction—\u003ci\u003eThe Jaguar Smile\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eImaginary Homelands\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eStep Across This Line\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eJoseph Anton\u003c\/i\u003e; and \u003ci\u003eLanguages of Truth\u003c\/i\u003e—and coedited two anthologies, \u003ci\u003eMirrorwork\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eBest American Short Stories 2008\u003c\/i\u003e. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. A former president of PEN American Center, Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature.\u003cb\u003eChapter 1\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eKnife\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt a quarter to eleven on August 12, 2022, on a sunny Friday morning in upstate New York, I was attacked and almost killed by a young man with a knife just after I came out on stage at the amphitheater in Chautauqua to talk about the importance of keeping writers safe from harm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI was with Henry Reese, co-creator, along with his wife, Diane Samuels, of the City of Asylum Pittsburgh project, which offers refuge to a number of writers whose safety is at risk in their own countries. This was the story Henry and I were at Chautauqua to tell: the creation in America of safe spaces for writers from elsewhere, and my involvement in that project’s beginnings. It was scheduled as part of a week of events at the Chautauqua Institution titled “More Than Shelter: Redefining the American Home.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe never had that conversation. As I was about to discover, on that day the amphitheater was not a safe space for me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI can still see the moment in slow motion. My eyes follow the running man as he leaps out of the audience and approaches me, I see each step of his headlong run. I watch myself coming to my feet and turning toward him. (I continue to face him. I never turn my back on him. There are no injuries on my back.) I raise my left hand in self-defense. He plunges the knife into it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAfter that there are many blows, to my neck, to my chest, to my eye, everywhere. I feel my legs give way, and I fall.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThursday, August 11, had been my last innocent evening. Henry, Diane, and I had strolled without a care through the grounds of the Institution and had a pleasant dinner at 2 Ames, a restaurant on the corner of the green park area called Bestor Plaza. We reminisced about the talk I’d given eighteen years earlier in Pittsburgh about my part in creating the International Cities of Refuge Network. Henry and Diane were at the talk and were inspired to make Pittsburgh an asylum city, too. They began by funding one small house and sponsoring a Chinese poet, Huang Xiang, who strikingly covered the exterior walls of his new home with a poem in large white-painted Chinese letters. Gradually, Henry and Diane expanded the project until they had a whole street of asylum houses, Sampsonia Way, on the city’s North Side. I was happy to be in Chautauqua to celebrate their achievement.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat I didn’t know was that my would-be killer was already present on the grounds of the Chautauqua Institution. He had entered using a false ID, his fake name constructed out of the real names of well-known Shia Muslim extremists, and even as we walked to dinner and back again to the guesthouse where we were staying, he, too, was there somewhere, he had been there for a couple of nights, wandering around, sleeping rough, checking out the site of his intended attack, making his plan, unnoticed by any surveillance camera or security guard. We could have run into him at any moment.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI do not want to use his name in this account. My Assailant, my would-be Assassin, the Asinine man who made Assumptions about me, and with whom I had a near-lethal Assignation . . . I have found myself thinking of him, perhaps forgivably, as an Ass. However, for the purposes of this text, I will refer to him more decorously as “the A.” What I call him in the privacy of my home is my business.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis “A.” didn’t bother to inform himself about the man he had decided to kill. By his own admission, he read barely two pages of my writing and watched a couple of YouTube videos of me, and that was all he needed. From this we can deduce that, whatever the attack was about, it wasn’t about \u003ci\u003eThe Satanic Verses\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI will try to understand what it was about in this book.A New York Times Notable Book of the Year; National Book Award finalist","brand":"Random House Trade Paperbacks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48233301475557,"sku":"NP9780593730256","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780593730256.jpg?v=1767730815","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/knife-isbn-9780593730256","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}