Recovering post attack but Salman Rushdie won't promote new novel
Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie will not promote his new novel amid major backlash for the same. The author is currently recovering after he was attacked some five months ago and has no plans of promoting his new novel, according to his agent.
In a statement, the agent said that the author’s “recovery is progressing, but he will not be making any public appearances to promote his forthcoming novel”. His new book is called Victory City.
As for the physical attack, Salman Rushdie met with the mishap at the Chautauqua Institution in New York state, leaving him with the loss of sight in one eye and without the use of one hand. Salman Rushdie was stabbed in the neck and torso as he came on stage to give a talk on artistic freedom at the Chautauqua Institution on 12 August 2022. Victory City is his first book since the attack.
The novel will be published on February 9. There’s a plan for a free online event with authors Margaret Atwood and Neil Gaiman, run in partnership with PEN America, PEN Canada and English PEN. A second event will be held at the Bristol Festival of Ideas on 21 February, with a panel including Darran Anderson, author of Imaginary Cities, investigative journalist Sian Norris and human rights barrister Susie Alegre.
Presented as an abridged translation of a fictitious Sanskrit verse saga, long buried in a pot in the ground and now retold by a narrator, Victory City opens in a magical version of 14th-century India. The original author of the poem is a young orphan girl, Pampa Kampana who is possessed by the goddess Parvati and becomes instrumental in founding a great city, Bisnaga. After a short time in power, Pampa plots her return from exile and faces death threats and attacks. The novel takes the readers through 250 years in which she seeks to fulfil her divine purpose of bringing women agency in a patriarchal world and creating a kingdom where women are “neither veiled nor hidden”.
