Knife

Reviews

“Candid, plain-spoken and gripping . . . Knife is a clarifying book. It reminds us of the threats the free world faces. It reminds us of the things worth fighting for.”—The New York Times

“Knife isn’t so much about pondering imminent death than it is an affirmation—an insistence—on returning to life.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“The subject—the idea for which Rushdie nearly died—is the freedom to say what he wants . . . Rushdie survived, but he has too many scars to be certain that the idea will. This book is his way of fighting back.”—The Atlantic

“A brave and beautiful book that tells his story with a cathartic relish, no gruesome detail spared . . . this book is as much a love letter to his wife—the poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths—as it is a punch-back at his assailant.”—The Wall Street Journal

Salman Rushdie’s memoir is horrific, upsetting—and a masterpiece . . . Knife is a tour-de-force, in which the great novelist takes his brutal near-murder and spins it into a majestic essay on art, pain and love . . . full of Rushdie’s wit, his wisdom, his stoicism, his optimism, his love of all culture.”—Daily Telegraph
 
“Knife is in part about—and in some sense itself is—a battle between the two most prominent Rushdies: Great Writer and Great Man, artist and advocate, private person and public figure . . . Contains some of the most precise, chilling prose of his career.”—Vulture

“Not just a candid and fearless book but—against all odds—a defiantly witty one . . . A ‘reckoning’, if not quite a catharsis, Rushdie’s invigorating dispatch from (almost) the far side of death’s door names and limits the attack as ‘a large red ink blot.’”—The Financial Times

“Rushdie’s triumph is not to be other: despite his terrible injuries and the threat he still lives under, he remains incorrigibly himself, as passionate as ever about art and free speech.”—The Guardian

“Knife is testament to Rushdie’s convictions and to the sustaining power of love as he focuses on the suffering and support of his family and his wife, writer and artist Rachel Eliza Griffiths, during this ordeal . . . every electrifying page elicits tears and awe.”—Booklist

“A graceful meditation on life and death that captures Rushdie at his most observant and lyrical.”—Kirkus Expand reviews