British writer Salman Rushdie said on Tuesday, during a decoration presentation in the United Kingdom, to have started writing again, nine months after the knife attack which almost cost him his life in the United States.
The 75-year-old author, wearing glasses with black lens, posed for photographers after receiving a medal and the title of Companion of Honor at Windsor Castle, west London, from Princess Anne, sister of King Charles III.
The intellectual of Indian origin, naturalized American and who lives in New York, said he resumed writing even if it had “taken time”. “I recovered quite well, that’s why I was able to come, I had to wait a while”, explained the writer, less than a week after his first public appearance, during a gala in New York, since his assault.
On August 12, he was invited to a literary conference in Chautauqua, a small cultural and bucolic town in northwestern New York State, near Great Lake Erie. At the time of speaking, a young American of Lebanese origin suspected of being sympathizers with Shiite Iran had thrown himself on him, armed with a knife, and had stabbed him a dozen times. Spectators and guards then subdued the assailant, who has since been charged and imprisoned pending trial. His literary agent Andrew Wylie revealed in October that he had lost the sight of one eye and the use of one hand.
In February, when his latest novel Victory City was released, the writer told the New Yorker that he had a lot of trouble writing and suffered from post-traumatic stress. Adored by the elites in the West, hated by Muslim extremists in Iran or Pakistan, some were delighted with his aggression Salman Rushdie is an icon of freedom of expression. He has lived since 1989 under the threat of a fatwa issued by Iran after the publication of his book The Satanic Verses.