Rushdie releases new novel six months after attack

LONDON

Six months after being stabbed, British author Salman Rushdie today publishes his new novel “Victory City,” an “epic tale” of a 14th-century woman who defies a patriarchal world to rule a city.

Written before the U.S. knife attack that nearly took the Indian-born author’s life, the novel purports to be a translation of a historical epic originally written in Sanskrit.

The much-anticipated work tells the tale of young orphan girl Pampa Kampana who is endowed by a goddess with magical powers and founds the city, in modern-day India, of Bisnaga, which translates as Victory City.

Rushdie, 75, will not promote his 15th novel due to his physical condition, although his agent Andrew Wylie told The Guardian that his “recovery is progressing.”

He was attacked as he was about to speak at a conference in Chautauqua in upstate New York, near Lake Erie, on Aug. 12, 2022.

The author had lived in hiding for years after Iran’s first supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordered his killing for what he deemed the blasphemous nature of “The Satanic Verses.” The stabbing suspect, Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old from New Jersey with roots in Lebanon, was arrested immediately after the attack and subsequently pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Rushdie, a naturalized American who has lived in New York for 20 years, lost the sight in one eye and the use of one hand, Wylie said in October.

While not personally promoting the book, Rushdie has begun to communicate via social network Twitter, most often to share press reviews of his new novel.

Several events are also planned to accompany its release, including a conference with writers Margaret Atwood and Neil Gaiman that will be broadcast online. An icon of free speech since he was subjected to the fatwa that forced him into hiding, Rushdie is still an outspoken defender of the power of words. His new work follows a heroine on a mission to “give women equal agency in a patriarchal world,” according to publisher Penguin Random House’s summary.

The book tells the tale of Pampa Kampana’s creation of a city and of its downfall.

“Over the next 250 years, Pampa Kampana’s life becomes deeply interwoven with Bisnaga’s, from its literal sowing from a bag of magic seeds to its tragic ruination in the most human of ways: the hubris of those in power,” it added.

The novel concludes with the statement: “Words are the only victors.”