Update Feb 4, 2025
The man charged with stabbing Salman Rushdie is going on trial. The author will take the stand
MAYVILLE, N.Y. (AP) — In 2022, Salman Rushdie was about to deliver a lecture before a live audience in western New York when a man ran towards him and plunged a knife into the author’s hand as he raised it in self-defense.
“After that there are many blows, to my neck, to my chest, to my eye, everywhere,” Rushdie recalled in a memoir that followed. “I feel my legs give way, and I fall.”
In the coming weeks, Rushdie is expected to return to the same New York county to recount the experience as one of the first witnesses in the trial of the man charged with wielding the knife that day, Hadi Matar.
Jury selection got underway Tuesday. Matar, 27, of Fairview, New Jersey, has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder and assault.
