Salman Rushdie's new novel, Victory City, feels like it draws parallels from his own life
“If I can’t burn you,” he told her, “I can certainly burn your book, which I don’t need to read to know that it’s full of unsuitable and forbidden thoughts, and then you will die and be forgotten, and nobody will know your name…What do you say to that?”
In August 2022, Salman Rushdie was repeatedly stabbed by a fanatic in Chautauqua, New York. He was blinded in one eye and also lost the use of one hand. It hasn’t killed his spirit. (Twitter)
It is in keeping with the magic realism that powered Rushdie’s literary career, that his loss of eyesight (in one eye) is mirrored in the attack on his heroine, Pampa Kampana, who ends up being blinded, in his new book.