In his memoir “Knife. Meditations After an Attempted Murder,” Salman Rushdie describes, for the first time and in impressive detail, the traumatic consequences of the August 2022 assassination attempt on him. “Knife” is a gripping report that describes the survival of the attack on the exceptional author 30 years after the fatwa was ordered.
In cooperation with the international literature festival berlin (ilb), the Deutsches Theater Berlin, and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, Bertelsmann is staging the first and only public event in Germany. The author will speak with Marie Kaiser and Thomas Böhm (both radioeins rbb) about the attack and how he processed it in his book. Also featuring a reading by Ulrich Matthes, a member of the Deutsches Theater ensemble, the evening will be an impressive literary experience.
Salman Rushdie, born in Bombay in 1947, moved to England at the age of fourteen and later studied history at Cambridge. He became world-famous with his novel “Midnight's Children”, for which he won the Booker Prize. In 1996, he was awarded the EU's Aristeion Prize for Literature for his works. In 2007, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him. In 2022, the German PEN Center made him an honorary member. In 2023, he was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.
© Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Penguin Verlag | translated by Bernhard Robben
In August 2022, Salman Rushdie was attacked with a knife and seriously injured during an open stage reading. More than thirty years after the Iranian regime issued a fatwa against him for his novel “The Satanic Verses”, the threat catches up with him. Salman Rushdie survives the attack and holds the sharpest sword against his attacker: he processes this unimaginable act, which left the whole world in suspense, into a story about fear, gratitude and the fight for freedom and self-determination.
“Knife” is Salman Rushdie's most personal work, urgent and unflinchingly honest. A life-affirming hymn to the power of literature to give meaning to the unthinkable.
Thursday, May 16th 2024, 7 pm
Deutsches Theater Berlin
Schumannstraße 13A
10117 Berlin
Event languages: German/English
Main sponsor: Hauptstadtkulturfonds
With the kind support of: Berthold Leibinger Stiftung, Fondation Jan Michalski
An event of the international festival berlin
In cooperation with: Deutsches Theater Berlin, Penguin Verlag, Bertelsmann
Autorenforum, Das Blaue Sofa, Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels
