Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie is a memoir going over the events before, during, and afterwards of the attempted murder of the author himself on August 12 of 2022. To be quite honest and clear, I had never heard of Salman Rushdie before this attack. I do remember getting notifications of this attack like everyone else at the time and wondered just what was going on, thinking how popular he must have been to be getting notifications sent out worldwide on everyone’s phones. Turns out he has written a bunch of popular fictional novels throughout his long career and that one of them was so popular that it got him put on a hit list. I’m not even quite sure why I chose this book as my next read. It did, however, get voted as one of the best books to read for 2024 by The New Yorker, and so I thought why not, and I’m really glad I did.

I can’t believe it can be easy to write about such a life-altering event, especially an attempted murder in which you were on the brink of death and very unlikely to survive. Salmon definitely puts things into perspective and makes his reader not just understand exactly what he was going through before and during the attack but also how he was able to find a way forward to continue living life and not be defeated by this event. A lot of it has to do with his wife, Eliza Griffiths, which also goes to show that a man should be fortunate to have a good and caring partner by his side when stuff hits the fan.

I was afraid that as an author with many fictional novels under his belt, this memoir would somehow either read oddly or be fluffed up with extra things that have no relation to the subject at hand. Basically, I was afraid that the story would somehow get away from the author. Once again, this proved to be an unnecessary worry. At only a little over 200 pages, I can say that every chapter was worth reading. Yes, due to his immense knowledge of the literary world and our age difference, a lot of the references he makes throughout the book go straight over my head. I do admire how he is able to remember and pull quotes from so many sources to relate to the specific situations he was in. After having read this memoir, I believe I may want to try one of his novels. Midnight’s Children seems like as good a start as any.

FYI: The trial for the defendant was still ongoing after this memoir was published. Curiously, I wanted to see if there was any progress on this and, sure enough, just five or six days prior to finishing this book, his attempted murderer was found guilty on February 21, 2025, in a court of law, with sentencing set to follow later.