British writer Salman Rushdie has admitted for the first time since he was nearly killed in a knife attack in the United States last summer that he struggles to write and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, AFP reports.

The famous naturalized American writer of Indian origin, who lives in New York, gave an extensive interview to the cultural elite newspaper The New Yorker on the eve of the US release of his latest novel, City of Victory, a “women’s epic”. story” in the 14th century.

His exclusive interview with New Yorker editor David Remnick is called “The Salman Rushdie Challenge” and is accompanied by an hour-long audio interview and a grim black-and-white photo of the scarred 75-year-old intellectual. scars and wearing glasses with a black lens on his right eye.

In response to what he called a “dramatic and powerful” photo on Twitter, Rushdie posted another, in color, of himself wearing the same black glasses but with a more relaxed expression.

Loss of vision in one eye

In October, his literary agent, Andrew Wiley, reported that he had lost sight in one eye, and the muscles in one arm were severely damaged.

Although “Victory City” was completed before the August 12, 2022 explosion in the northern United States, Salman Rushdie says that “it was very, very difficult for him to write it.”

“I sit down to write and nothing happens; I write, but it is a mixture of emptiness and nonsense, things that I write and then delete the next day,” admitted the writer, who has been under the threat of death since 1989 due to a fatwa issued by Iran after the publication of his book The Satanic Verses.

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” he says, warning his interlocutor: “You know PTSD exists,” using the acronym PTSD.

Although his “recovery is progressing”, his agent told The Guardian last week, Rushdie will not be publicly promoting his 15th novel, which is released in the US on Tuesday and in the UK on Thursday.

Admired by elites in the West, loathed by Muslim extremists in Iran and Pakistan, some of whom cheered the August attack, Rushdie is a symbol of free speech, and he still eruditely defends the power of speech in Victory City. and with his extravagant style.

The book tells the story of Pampa Campana, a young orphan who was gifted by a goddess with a magical power that would create the city of Bisnaga – literally “City of Victory”.

On a mission to “give women an equal footing in a patriarchal world,” according to publisher Penguin Random House, her heroine and poet, who will live nearly 250 years, will also witness the “arrogance of those in power,” he will witness the rise and then the destruction of the city of Bisnaga and the suffering of exile.