Reviews with content warning for Medical content - Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

Without a doubt, a 5 star rating. Even more so as the audiobook, narrated by Salman Rushdie. A miraculous story of survival with absolutely poetic language about family, love, violence and fear. I cannot recommend this more to literally anyone. I think this will be a book I wish I could read again for the first time.

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elisecavanaugh's review against another edition

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reflective medium-paced

4.0

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vireogirl's review against another edition

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dark emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

Very well written. This is the first book of his I've read. I'd heard of it and happened to see it on the Lucky Day shelf.
His perspective on the world rang true. It had a nice balance of lighter moments, deep thoughts, and observations. His opinion on why religion should be in the private realm and not public was well explained.

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samchase112's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

4.0

Here I go again, continuing my streak of reading famous novelist's memoirs before ever picking up their fiction. This was a powerful one, about a devastating and powerful event and the life-changing aftermath. There's no question Salman Rushdie is a thoughtful, opinionated, resilient person, but his kindness, humor, and love for his family are what shone through in this memoir. While I'm not sure it will become a long-term favorite, the first half was extremely moving, and I highly recommend it.

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r_zoner's review against another edition

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emotional informative inspiring reflective tense medium-paced

3.25

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kjboldon's review against another edition

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reflective slow-paced

2.0

I am happy for Salman that he survived and sounds happy in his life and marriage, and happy for those who love him that he's alive.

I wish I found this a better book. I found it riddled with tired cliches, especially about his wife. In one sentence he says she and he bopped at a rock concert. I felt like he was writing as if magnanimous about her writing and her art, but felt an undercurrent of condescension and sexism running through it. And that condescension was greatly magnified when he tried to imagine a dialogue between himself and his would-be assassin.

Reading that section I sometimes had to stop, and I sometimes flinched from the page, at the arrogance and ego of Rushdie, even while I could tell he was doing his best to be empathic, and thought he was being magnanimous.

Terrorism is wrong, death threats are wrong and what happened to Rushdie was a tragedy. But this book didn't strike me as insightful or empathic, a complaint I've had with his other writing. It affirmed for me that he is not an artist whose work moves me.

Go in peace and love, Salman and your family. I'm sorry for what happened to you.

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lilivdw's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective medium-paced

3.5

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