- - Salman Rushdie Shares How He Found Joy in Writing Fiction Again After His Near-Fatal Attack

Meredith GordonNovember 5, 2025 at 1:54 AM

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Salman Rushdie is making a return to fiction.

The influential author, who won the Booker Prize for fiction in 1981 for his novel Midnight’s Children, has published numerous acclaimed works of fiction, including The Satanic Verses and The Moor’s Last Sigh. But his just-published fiction collection, The Eleventh Hour, marks Rushdie’s first new work of fiction since the 2022 attack in which he was stabbed 15 times, an assault that left him blind in one eye.

On his recent press tour for The Eleventh Hour, Rushdie shared new insight into how the stabbing inspired his return to fiction.

Rushdie’s memoir Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder was published in 2024, detailing the attack and its aftermath. But The Eleventh Hour represents his first work of fiction since surviving the brutal incident. He told the :

“While I was writing Knife, I couldn’t even think about fiction. I had no space in my head for that,” Rushdie said last week. “But almost immediately after I finished the book, before it came out, it’s like this door swung open in my head and I was allowed to enter the room of fiction again.”

The Eleventh Hour: Salman Rushdie’s Return to Fiction

The Eleventh Hour consists of three novellas and two short stories set across India, England, and the U.S. While the collection explores themes of aging, memory, and mortality, two of the stories—In the South and The Old Man in the Piazza—were completed before the 2022 stabbing. Still, the five pieces together reflect a preoccupation with time and resilience, a natural focus for a writer who turns 79 next year and who has lived under the shadow of a fatwa since 1989.

Related: Two Amazon Standout Books Also Named Barnes & Noble's 2025 Best Book of the Year Finalists

The Fatwa and Its Lasting Impact

Rushdie’s 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, which blends magical realism and religious themes partly inspired by the life of the Prophet Muhammad, was considered blasphemous by many Muslims who found its content deeply offensive to Islam. In 1989, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death. Although Iran announced in 1998 that it would no longer actively support the decree, Rushdie’s assailant, Hadi Matar, has said he was inspired by the decades-old fatwa.

Rushdie was stabbed multiple times by Matar during a 2022 event in New York. He now bears a scar on his right cheek and has lost sight in his right eye. The author often wears a darkened lens but is joyfully promoting his new work of fiction on an extensive book tour—albeit with security close by.

The “hopeful” author admits the brutal attack inspired his latest fiction, but says the act of writing itself felt familiar.

“No,” he told the . “It just feels like I’m so glad to have it back. I hope that people reading the book feel a certain kind of joy in it, because I felt joy writing it.”

Related: Reese Witherspoon Names November Book Club Pick: ‘I’m Still Thinking About the Ending’

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This story was originally reported by Parade on Nov 5, 2025, where it first appeared in the Books section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”