Overview
- Rushdie accepted the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award at Sunday’s ceremony in Dayton, Ohio.
- He published Knife in 2024, a National Book Award finalist, and this year released The Eleventh Hour, his first fiction since the attack.
- He was attacked on a New York lecture stage in 2022 and lost sight in one eye; authorities said the assailant sought to carry out a decades‑old death edict.
- The attacker, Hadi Matar of New Jersey, was sentenced earlier this year to 25 years in prison.
- In his remarks, Rushdie said art cannot stop bullets but can enlarge voices, citing the wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan.