KNIFE: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie (Jonathan Cape, $40)
“A millimetre deeper and the knife would have made contact with the brain.
Ever the novelist, after reading an interview given by his failed assassin, Salman Rushdie notes that if he had submitted a book to his editor with a character whose motive for cold-blooded and well-planned murder was that he’d read a couple of pages of someone’s book and watched a few videos, the editor would have found the character unconvincing and asked the writer for better motives.
It is encouraging to read Rushdie being Rushdie again. For one chapter of his new book he conducts imaginary interviews with his assailant, hunting for his
