Overview

• Rushdie told the Hay Festival audience that he has moved past the August 2022 stabbing and is feeling excellent.
• His attacker, Hadi Matar, received a 25-year prison sentence for attempted murder last month.
• He described returning to the Chautauqua Institution lecture stage as a pivotal moment in reclaiming his confidence.
• After publishing his memoir Knife, Rushdie has reignited his fiction work and will release a novella collection, The Eleventh Hour, in November 2025.
• He reaffirmed his commitment to freedom of speech and questioned artificial intelligence’s capacity for humor in creative writing.