‘When somebody wounds you 15 times it definitely feels very personal’ – Salman Rushdie’s frank meditation on his attack is remarkable and uplifting

Memoir

Salman Rushdie is resilient and erudite after attack. Photo: Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Paul Perry

Two nights before ­Salman Rushdie was to give a talk at the Chautauqua Institution, a non-­profit education centre in western New York, in the summer of 2022, he had a nightmare in which he was attacked in a ­Roman amphitheatre by a gladiator with a spear.

His wife, the poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths, woke and reassured him. Despite his wife’s reassurances, Rushdie did not want to go to the festival to speak – and yet there were bills to pay.