Rushdie describes lead-up to stabbing

Author Sir Salman Rushdie has described the moment before he was stabbed on stage in New York state in 2022.

The acclaimed novelist, 76, read an excerpt from his upcoming memoir during an interview with American journalist Anderson Cooper for 60 Minutes on CBS, which will air on Sunday.

Reading from his book, Sir Salman said: "In the corner of my right eye, the last thing my right eye would ever see.

"I saw the man in black running towards me, down the right hand side of the seating area. Black clothes, black face mask.

"He was coming in hard and low, a squat missile.

"I confess I had sometimes imagined my assassin rising up in some public forum or other and coming for me in just this way.

"So my first thought when I saw this murderous shape rushing towards me was 'So it's you. Here you are'."

He told Cooper: "It felt like something coming out of the distant past and trying to drag me back in time, back into that distant past in order to kill me."

In another teaser, uploaded to the 60 Minutes social media channel, Sir Salman talked about his survival feeling like a miracle.

"It feels like a miracle", he said.

"And I certainly don't feel that some hand reached down from the skies and guarded me.

"But I do think something happened which wasn't supposed to happen."

Sir Salman, who suffered severe, life-changing injuries after the incident, will release the book, titled Knife: Meditations After Anattemptedmurder,with Penguin Random House on April 16.

On April 21, he will discuss his book and the attack that left him blind in one eye and with a damaged hand during the Southbank Centre's Spring Literature and Spoken Word Season.