The Front List: Salman Rushdie in conversation with Mishal Husain

In August 2022, literary luminary Salman Rushdie was stabbed on stage as he delivered a talk on artistic freedom and writers in exile – more than 30 years after a Fatwa was issued on his life. In a very rare interview, as part of our McEwan series of events, we are honoured to present Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder – his intimate and arresting account of the day of the attack and its aftermath. ‘“This was a necessary book for me to write: a way to take charge of what happened, and to answer violence with art,’” Rushdie says of this extraordinary book. While Salman Rushdie will appear remotely, Mishal Husain, leading broadcaster and host of BBC’s Today programme, will appear on-stage alongside Adjoa Andoh who will help illuminate his extraordinary career as one of the most beloved, and incendiary, novelists of our time.  
 
Salman Rushdie is the author of 15 previous novels, including Midnight’s Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker), Shame, The Satanic Verses, The Moor’s Last Sigh, and Quichotte, all of which have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He is a former president of PEN America and the recipient of the PEN Centenary Courage Award.