The author Salman Rushdie. Photo: TOBIAS SCHWARZ
The author Salman Rushdie, who survived a stabbing in 2022 that almost took his life, revealed he is writing new works of fiction.
Rushdie, speaking via videolink to the Lviv BookForum in Ukraine, told a packed auditorium and thousands more online that he is in the midst of writing three novellas.
While Rushdie appeared at writers' conference to discuss his memoir Knife, a look at his recovery from the attack that cost him an eye, he also spoke about a new project that examines life's end.
"When you get to this age you obviously think about how long is left," said Rushdie, who is 77. "There obviously aren't 22 more [books] that will be written. If I am lucky there will be one or two."
The Indian-born British American author is taking inspiration from philosophers Edward Said and Theodor Adorno who examined what they called "late style" work that tends to come in the latter years of an artist's life.
"Essentially what [Said] says is there are two ways of going. One is serenity, where you are reconciled to the world and reconciled to your own life, and you write out of that sense of peace, and the other is rage. My view is it can be both. It could be serenity at one moment, and rage in another. These don't have to be permanent conditions."
The novellas, each about 75 pages long, are based in what Rushdie called the three "worlds" in his life: India, Britain and the United States.
"They all in some way consider the idea of an ending," said Rushie.
"But I've probably said more than I should," he added.
Rushdie won the Booker Prize in 1981 for his second novel Midnight's Children. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2007 for his service to literature.
Following the release of Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses, in 1988 the author became the target of a fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini, the former Supreme Leader of Iran. Khomeini called the book blasphemous towards Islam.
In Knife, Rushdie gives an account of his recovery from the 2022 attack when the assailant stabbed him more than a dozen times at a public event in New York that the author was speaking at.
Hadi Matar, Rushdie's attacker, was charged with attempted murder and assault along with the terrorist group Hezbollah.
"It actually was very, very close to not being OK," Rushdie told his Ukrainian audience. He voiced his support for Ukraine, following the invasion by Russia almost three years ago.
Part of Knife focuses on the role love played in his recovery that came from his wife, the artist Rachel Eliza Griffiths. She is a photographer and videographer, and filmed most days of Rushdie's recovery. The footage will be turned into a documentary, Rushdie said.
"There is just the power of love I wanted to say in the [Knife], that love is a force and that when you are lucky enough to receive it, it can save your life."