Salman Rushdie is not who you think

Salman Rushdie's 1988 novel, "The Satanic Verses (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/323746/the-satanic-verses-by-salman-rushdie/)", made him the target of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who denounced the book as blasphemous and issued a fatwa calling for his assassination. Rushdie spent years trying to escape the shadow that the fatwa cast over him, and for a time he believed he had succeeded. But in 2022, an attacker attacked him on stage during a speech in Western New York and nearly killed him.

“I think now I will never be able to escape it. No matter what I have already written or what I can write now, I will always be the one who was stabbed,” he writes in his new memoir, “Knife: Meditations After Attempted Murder (https://www .penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738826/knife-by-salman-rushdie/).

During this conversation, I asked Rushdie to consider his desire to escape the fatwa; the gap between the reputation of his novels and their real merits; how his “phantom self” became more real to millions of people than himself; How many of us, in the Internet age, also have to deal with our many shadow selves; what Rushdie now lives for; and more.

Mentioned:

Midnight's Children (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/158932/midnights-children-by-salman-rushdie/) by Salman Rushdie

Book recommendations:

Don Quixote (https://www.harpercollins.com/products/don-quixote-miguel-de-cervantesedith-grossman?variant32122538426402) by Miguel de Cervantes, translated by Edith Grossman

One Hundred Years of Solitude (https://www.google.com/books/edition/One_Hundred_Years_of_Solitude/AfB8EAAAQBAJ?hlen&gbpv1&printsecfrontcover) by Gabriel García Márquez

The Trial (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7849) by Franz Kafka

The Castle (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/89248/the-castle-by-franz-kafka/) by Franz Kafka

Thoughts? Any guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].

You can find transcripts (posted at noon) and other episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast (https://www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-klein-podcast ). Book recommendations from all of our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs (https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show -book -recs.html) .

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our lead engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing done by Isaac Jones. Our editor-in-chief is Claire Gordon. The show's production team also includes Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, and Aman Sahota. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience Strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Mrinalini Chakravorty.

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