AGI – “Terrorism shouldn’t scare us. Violence should not discourage us. The fight goes on”: these are the words of the AGI Anglo-Indian writer Salman Rushdie in his first public appearance nine months after a knife attack.
The occasion for his explanations in Spanish, French and English was the literary gala “Pen America”, which took place in the Natural History Museum in New York, near Central Park. The 75-year-old intellectual was the victim of a knife attack by a young Lebanese-American on August 12, 2022, for which he risked his life.
The famous Indian-born writer received an honorary award from the freedom of speech and literary advocacy group Pen America, of which he was president. Rushdie, who wore glasses with a black lens in his right eye, had his picture taken on the gala’s red carpet and addressed the 700 guests, visibly moved. pen Americaan association that campaigns for freedom of expression, has never been so “important”Rushdie pointed this out.
Winner of this year’s British Book Award for Freedom to Publish, @SalmanRushdie accepts his Nibbie via video message #BritishBookAwards #nibbies pic.twitter.com/fXEV9ukQxj
— The Bookseller (@thebookseller) May 15, 2023
The aggression
“Without these people, I certainly wouldn’t be here today. I was the target that day, but they were heroes (…). I owe them my life,” the writer said once again after suffering the violent assault. On August 12, he was invited to a literary conference in Chautauqua, a small cultural and idyllic town in upstate New York, near the Great Lake Erie.
At the time of my speech, a young Lebanese-American suspect suspected of sympathizing with Shia Iran had come at him with a knife and stabbed him a dozen times. Bystanders and guards had detained the attacker, who was immediately arrested, charged and detained pending trial.
His literary agent, Andrew Wylie, revealed in October that Salman Rushdie he had lost sight in one eye and lost the use of one hand. In February, on the occasion of the publication of his latest novel “Victory City”, the writer confided in the elite cultural magazine “The New Yorker” in his first interview after the attack that he had great difficulty writing and suffered from post-traumatic stress.
Worshiped by western elites, hated by Muslim extremists in Iran or Pakistan, Rushdie is a free speech icon. He had been living under the death threat of a fatwa issued by Iran since 1989, after the publication of his book The Satanic Verses.
