Salman Rushdie: ’Watching the pool of my blood spreading, I thought: I’m dying’ | Exclusive

Sir Salman Rushdie has described the “matter of fact” realisation that he was dying after being stabbed in 2022, in a reading from his memoir recorded exclusively for The Telegraph. The Booker Prize winner recounts how he willed himself to carry on living as he watched a pool of blood “spreading out from my body” after the on-stage attack as he prepared to deliver a lecture in New York state. Sir Salman’s account of the stabbing and his recovery from it, called Knife: Meditations After An Attempted Murder, is published today. Sitting in the book-lined office of his agent in New York, Sir Salman is able to hold the book with his injured left hand, which was badly damaged when he was stabbed more than a dozen times by a suspected Islamist fanatic. Read more: #salmanrushdie #stabbing #knife Subscribe to The Telegraph with our special offer: just £1 for 3 months. Start your free tria