Acclaimed writer Salman Rushdie is revisiting the most traumatic moment of his life — 12 August 2022, the day he was repeatedly stabbed on stage in New York. It was an attack he documented in his recent memoir, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, but new revelations suggest he came even closer to death than he initially believed.
According to Rushdie, doctors who rushed from the audience to save him have since told him that, when they reached the stage, he had no pulse. “My heart had actually stopped,” he recalls. “That’s as close as you can get without crossing over.”
Today, sitting upright in a brightly lit room, the 78-year-old appears fully alert — even spirited. The only visible reminder of that day is the tinted lens covering the eye he lost when the attacker’s blade severed his optic nerve, narrowly missing his brain.
A Life Under Threat Since 1989
Rushdie has been one of the world’s most recognisable authors since 1989, when Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for his killing after the publication of The Satanic Verses. Despite retiring from a life in hiding many years ago and living fairly openly in New York, the fatwa’s shadow has never completely disappeared.
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The attacker who targeted him in 2022 — a 24-year-old American of Lebanese Shia background — reportedly knew little about Rushdie or his books. He had skimmed only a few pages of The Satanic Verses, a novel often misunderstood but regarded by critics as one of Rushdie’s finest.
MI6 Intervened “Multiple Times”
Rushdie revealed that, during the years following the fatwa, British intelligence agencies foiled numerous assassination plots aimed at him.
“From what I was told, there were at least half a dozen serious attempts, which MI6 successfully frustrated,” he says.
He recalls private meetings with senior security officials: “They were absolutely clear that they were not going to allow a foreign power to execute a British citizen on British soil.”
Debate continues today over the cost and logistics of protecting public figures — a topic reignited by discussions around Prince Harry’s security. Rushdie avoids direct commentary on the royal dispute but notes that threats against high-profile individuals are rarely exaggerated.
A New Book — And No Plans to Stop Writing
Despite the 2022 attack and months of recovery, Rushdie has just released his 23rd book, The Eleventh Hour, a vibrant collection of five stories exploring mortality with humour, creativity, and experimentation.
“It’s about confronting the inevitable,” he says, “but I wanted the writing to feel light, playful — not heavy.”
The collection includes several near-novella-length pieces inspired by literary greats like EM Forster, whom Rushdie met while studying at Cambridge, and Alan Turing.
One of his favourite opening lines in the new book came unexpectedly:
“When the Honorary Fellow S. M. Arthur woke up in his darkened college bedroom, he was dead.”
Rushdie recalls laughing at the absurdity before realising the sentence would define the tone of the story.
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Though some critics have interpreted The Eleventh Hour as a reflective “coda,” Rushdie dismisses any talk of retirement. “It is absolutely not a farewell,” he insists. “I hope my next work will be a full-length novel. The idea is forming — but not ready to share yet.”
Writing With Age — Slower, But Sharper
Rushdie admits his writing routine has changed significantly over time.
“When I was younger, I was wilder,” he laughs. “I’d write huge amounts in a day, then spend twice as long rewriting.”
Now, discipline is the rule.
“I treat it like a job. Coffee, desk, work. A page a day makes me happy. Sometimes 200 or 300 words — as long as they’re good. The revision never stops.”
Love, Marriage, and a Softer Side
His latest book is dedicated partly to Rachel Eliza Griffiths, his wife since 2021 and a well-known American poet. Rushdie admits, somewhat shyly, that he is “probably a romantic.”
He has been married five times and has two adult sons — Zafar, 46, and Milan, 28 — as well as grandchildren. Before meeting Griffiths, he had assumed he was done with marriage after his divorce from TV host Padma Lakshmi in 2007. “Life surprised me,” he says simply.
Battling Misconceptions — And A Rude Interview
Rushdie laughs off his fleeting 2010 reputation as a glamorous playboy — an image created by a now-infamous interview he describes as “the rudest ever done about me.”
“If you ask anyone who truly knows me, I’m nothing like that. I prefer small gatherings. Big, flashy events drain me.”
Still, in the years after the fatwa, he made it a point to appear in public so people wouldn’t fear being near him. He recounts a moment when a well-known painter asked if they should “be scared and leave the restaurant.”
“I told him, ‘I’m having dinner. You can do as you wish.’ But it showed me how people thought. I had to push back against that.”
Reflections on Censorship, Politics, and Racism
Rushdie remains an outspoken defender of free speech, even as he acknowledges its misuse by extremist or authoritarian groups. He cites reports of more than 23,000 books currently banned or challenged in the United States — especially those addressing LGBTQ+ themes, Black history, or minority experiences.
“It’s a deliberate cultural project,” he warns, though he sees a growing backlash against these bans.
On UK politics, Rushdie comments briefly on the rise of populist right-wing movements. He remembers experiencing racial slurs as a student at Rugby School — graffiti in his study cubicle urging “Wogs go home”.
He waves off the memory as “boys being nasty,” but when asked about allegations around contemporary political figures like Nigel Farage, he is blunt: “I wouldn’t brush that off.”
On Artificial Intelligence: ‘Comforting, But Also Unsettling’
Rushdie remains unconcerned, for now, about AI’s ability to mimic literary style.
A friend once asked ChatGPT to generate 300 words in Rushdie’s voice.
“It was unbelievably bad,” he says. “Nobody who had ever read my work would confuse it with mine.”
Still, he acknowledges that AI evolves rapidly — and that the essence of literature lies in originality.
“The word ‘novel’ itself means something new.”
The Eleventh Hour — Out Now
The Eleventh Hour is available from Penguin Books (£16.99), offering readers a blend of imagination, humour and contemplative storytelling — all from a man who has survived both literal and ideological attempts to silence him.
