British writer Salman Rushdie said Tuesday, at a decoration ceremony in the United Kingdom, that he has started writing again, nine months after the knife attack that nearly claimed his life in the United States. The 75-year-old author, wearing glasses with a black lens, posed for photographers after being made a Companion of Honour at Windsor Castle by Princess Anne, sister of King Charles III.
The Companion of Honor medal is "a special award given to those who have made a major contribution to the arts, science, medicine or government over a long period of time," the royal family's website says. It does not result in any ennoblement. The Order of the Companions of Honour can only have 65 living members at a time. Paul McCartney, fashion designer Paul Smith, writer J.K. Rowling, physicist Stephen Hawking are currently among them. Desmond Tutu was before his death.
Attacked in August in Chautauqua by an American of Lebanese origin
The Indian-born intellectual, naturalized American and who lives in New York, spent his adolescence in Britain and began his professional life there. He has been living since 1989 under the threat of a fatwa issued by Iran after the publication of his book "The Satanic Verses".
On August 12, during a literary conference in Chautauqua, a small cultural and bucolic town in the state of New York, to which he was invited, he was stabbed a dozen times by a young American of Lebanese origin suspected of being a sympathizer of Shiite Iran. Rushdie had been hospitalized in a worrying condition. His literary agent Andrew Wylie revealed in October that he had lost the use of one eye and one hand.
In February, during the release of his latest novel "Victory City", the writer told the New Yorker that he had a lot of trouble writing and suffered from post-traumatic stress. On Tuesday, he admitted that getting back to work had "taken time." "I recovered quite well, that's why I was able to come, I had to wait a while," said the writer, five days after his first public appearance since his assault, at a gala in New York. When asked when he planned to finish his next book, he replied, "Oh, I'll let you know."
Salman Rushdie was invested as a Companion of Honour at Windsor Castle. In 2007, Queen Elizabeth II made him Knight Bachelor, the lowest rank of knights in England.
