Guwahati: World-renowned author Salman Rushdie made his first appearance in public on Tuesday in New York after the notorious near-fatal attack on him in 2022.
The author has been awarded the first-ever ‘Lifetime Disturbing the Peace Award’ by the Vaclav Havel Center on Tuesday.
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Only a handful of the more than 100 attendees had advance notice about Rushdie, whose whereabouts have largely been withheld from the general public since the stabbing incident that happened in August of 2022 during a literary festival in Western New York.
“I apologize for being a mystery guest,” Rushdie said Tuesday night after being introduced by “Reading Lolita in Tehran” author Azar Nafisi. “I don’t feel at all mysterious. But it made life a little simpler.”
Rushdie, 76, said that last month he had received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, and now was getting a prize for disturbing the peace, leaving him wondering which side of “the fence” he was on.
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He spent much of his speech praising Havel, a close friend whom he remembered as being among the first government leaders to defend him after the novelist was driven into hiding by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s 1989 decree calling for his death over the alleged blasphemy of “The Satanic Verses.”
Rushdie said Havel was “kind of a hero of mine” who was “able to be an artist at the same time as being an activist.”
“He was inspirational to me as for many, many writers, and to receive an award in his name is a great honour,” Rushdie added.