It’s rare that book news breaks into mainstream media headlines. Help me out readers – what comes to mind? For me there’s only a handful over the last twenty-odd years – the James Frey fiasco; the year no Pulitzer was awarded; the controversial publication of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman; Doris Lessing’s fabulous doorstep interview when she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007 (and the lack of agreement about whether Bob Dylan should have won the prize in 2017) and maybe, Margaret Atwood’s publication of The Testaments (because Americans were living a real-life Handmaid’s Tale in Trump’s first presidential term). But I think the most recent one was the shocking attempt on Salman Rushdie’s life at an author talk in 2022.

In Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, Rushdie reflects on the event and the aftermath. Continue reading →