Freedom of expression lies at the heart of democratic values. One might see the author Salman Rushdie as a wounded veteran of the fight for free speech. Over 30 years ago, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini imposed a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s assassination over a book he had never read, yet labeled blasphemous: "The Satanic Verses." In recent years, the threat seemed to have receded – until August 2022, when a young American man with a knife viciously attacked Rushdie in Chautauqua, New York, as he was about to speak about the issue of safety for writers. Rushdie nearly died. He has written about the attack and the love that helped him triumph over death in a new memoir, “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder.”

Originally aired on April 24, 2024

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Amanpour and Company features wide-ranging, in-depth conversations with global thought leaders and cultural influencers on the issues and trends impacting the world each day, from politics, business and technology to arts, science and sports. Christiane Amanpour leads the conversation on global and domestic news from London with contributions by prominent journalists Walter Isaacson, Michel Martin, Alicia Menendez and Hari Sreenivasan from the Tisch WNET Studios at Lincoln Center in New York City.

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