Точка Синхронізації

Renowned British-American author Salman Rushdie provided a harrowing, atheistic account of his 2022 near-death experience during a promotional tour for his memoir, "Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder," revealing that he encountered no spiritual afterlife following the brutal stabbing attack in Chautauqua, New York. In the book and subsequent interviews, Rushdie details the aftermath of the August 2022 assassination attempt by a 24-year-old assailant, explaining that his primary motivation for writing was to reclaim control over the narrative of his trauma. He pointedly rejects the traditional "tunnel of light" anecdotes common in near-death literature, describing the sensation of his life slipping away as a purely physical, terminal collapse of the body rather than a metaphysical transition. In "Knife," the Booker Prize-winning novelist reflects on the moment his body began to shut down while lying on the stage of the Chautauqua Institution, where he was scheduled to give a lecture on artistic freedom. Despite decades of living under a fatwa issued by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini due to his novel "The Satanic Verses," Rushdie had spent the years leading up to the attack living relatively openly. The memoir serves as a visceral rebuttal to the violence he suffered, transforming a moment of victimization into a philosophical examination of resilience and the limitations of religious mythology. He emphasizes that even as his body was "dying" and taking his consciousness with it, he found no evidence of a supernatural realm, reinforcing his lifelong secular worldview. The recovery process for the 76-year-old author has been arduous, resulting in the loss of sight in his right eye and permanent scarring on his hand. However, the release of this memoir marks a significant milestone in his return to public life. By describing the attack and his survival in such clinical, unsentimental terms, Rushdie seeks to demystify the event and strip the attacker of any symbolic or religious power. His account serves as a testament to the fragility of life and the power of the written word to process a profound physical and psychological crisis.