“If it weren’t for Henry and the audience,” Rushdie says in the book, “I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this.” “That Chautauqua morning I experienced the worst and the best of human nature almost simultaneously.”
At first it was unclear whether he would survive.
“The severity of his injuries was like something out of a horror movie,” said Andrew Wiley, who has represented the author for decades. Rushdie remained in hospital for nearly two months. Even after returning home, he had vivid and terrifying dreams. The story of the Duke of Gloucester's blindness in 'King Lear', the razor blades cutting his eyes as the clouds drift across the moon. He had medical appointments almost every day, with different specialists for each part of his affected body. “Everyone had to sign off on various repairs,” he said.
Rushdie was toying with ideas for a novel before the attacks. But “when I finally felt like the juices were starting to flow again, I went and opened the file I had, and it looked absolutely ridiculous,” he said. “It became clear that I couldn’t write anything else until I solved this problem.”
“The Knife” is a visceral and intimate book, unlike her previous memoir, “Joseph Anton,” written in the third person in 2012, where the central character existed on the same level as the supporting characters.
Rushdie described the previous book: “I wanted this book to read like a novel. but <나이프>is different. “This is not fictional. What I mean is, someone stabbed you. It's a pretty personal thing. Quite the first person,” he said.