Shehryar Fazli in the Los Angeles Review of Books:
Immediately after the attack, a photograph circulated of Rushdie being wheeled to an emergency helicopter; the volume of blood and the places he was bleeding from didn’t look promising. The longer the information gap stretched, the eerier our preparation for a post-Rushdie world became, one we’d feared even after Iran effectively lifted the fatwa in 1998.
Pull through! Pull through! I pleaded over and over, uselessly. To later receive that very affirmation, like a direct response from the macrocosm, was to see the approaching darkness yield a slice of light. Over the ensuing days and months, the news trickled in. He was off the ventilator. He was speaking. He was cracking jokes. He’d lost his right eye forever. He’d attended an event virtually. He was making public appearances and giving interviews. Now, with the release of his 2024 memoir Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, comes a summation of that terrifying period but also, to some extent, of a long, groundbreaking career.
More here.