New York : Salman Rushdie’s novel ‘Victory City’, which tells the story of an orphan girl named Pampa Kampana, who defied the male-centered social system of the fourteenth century and took over the governance of a city, has reached the bookstores. It will be released in Britain on Thursday. Six months ago, Rushdie was stabbed by a religious fanatic during a public event, which left him blind in one eye and unable to move his hand.
After the attack, he shared the picture on Twitter for the first time on Monday with the caption ‘This is how he sees me.’
“Victory City” is Rushdie’s 15th novel. It is a translation of a Sanskrit epic written before the invasion.
The attack took place in August while he was speaking at a public event at the Shataqua Institute in New York. A man of Lebanese origin, Hadi Matar, jumped onto the stage and stabbed him with a knife. Salman Rushdie fell to the ground following being stabbed in the face and neck.
75-year-old Rushdie had death threats. Rushdie’s book ‘Satanic Versus’ has been under threat since 1988. The threats were alleging blasphemy. In 1989, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini announced a reward of three million dollars for those who killed Rushdie. “After the long treatment following the attack, I tried to write, but I mightn’t. I went to the chair to write and felt helpless. Realized that my fingers were not moving with my mind. But I kept trying to type. Lines stretched out with alternating letters clear and obscure. The next day I deleted those meaningless sentences. The effort continued without giving up… In fact I am still not completely freed from that condition…” This is how Rushdie described his condition in an interview published by a New York magazine prior to the book’s publication.
