Salman Rushdie Is Not Who You Think He Is
b'Salman Rushdie\\u2019s 1988 novel, \\u201cThe Satanic Verses,\\u201d 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 the fatwa cast on him, and for some time, he thought he succeeded. But in 2022, an assailant attacked him onstage at a speaking engagement in western New York and nearly killed him.\\n\\n\\u201cI think now I\\u2019ll never be able to escape it. No matter what I\\u2019ve already written or may now write, I\\u2019ll always be the guy who got knifed,\\u201d he writes in his new memoir, \\u201cKnife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder.\\u201d\\n\\nIn this conversation, I asked Rushdie to reflect on his desire to escape the fatwa; the gap between the reputation of his novels and their actual merits; how his \\u201cshadow selves\\u201d became more real to millions than he was; how many of us in the internet age also have to contend with our many shadow selves; what Rushdie lives for now; and more.\\n\\nMentioned:\\n\\nMidnight\\u2019s Children by Salman Rushdie\\n\\nBook Recommendations:\\n\\nDon Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, translated by Edith Grossman\\n\\nOne Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garc\\xeda M\\xe1rquez\\n\\nThe Trial by Franz Kafka\\n\\nThe Castle by Franz Kafka\\n\\nThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.\\n\\nYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of \\u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\\u201d at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.\\n\\nThis episode of \\u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\\u201d was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show\\u2019s 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.'