New poet wife cares for Rushdie as he awaits release of next novel
AUTHOR’S UPCOMING BOOK IS ‘EPIC TALE OF A WOMEN SET IN 14TH CENTURY INDIA’
AUTHOR Sir Salman Rushdie, who survived an assassination attempt in August, has taken a fifth wife, the American poet, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, who is caring for him following his discharge from hospital.
He is also bringing out a new novel,
Victory City, his 14th, in February next year. Rushdie, who is 75, “is being cared for by his new wife, Griffiths, 32 years his junior, whom he married in a small ceremony in the US last summer (2021),” according to the Sunday Times (20).
“A few months later, in October, the couple threw a party for friends and family at the five-star Beaumont hotel in the West End of London, where he has been known to stay when visiting Britain. Those in attendance included (Ian) McEwan, who also attended Rushdie’s second wedding party in 1997 on Long Island, and Alan Yentob, the BBC’s former creative supremo.”
Rushdie and Griffiths appear to have been a couple for three or four years. They were often photographed together.
She is described as “a poet, visual artist, and novelist”. In her most recent book,
Seeing the Body (2020), she “pairs poetry with photography, exploring memory, Black womanhood, the American landscape, and rebirth”.
Her forthcoming debut novel, entitled
Promise, will be published by Penguin Random House, which is also bringing out Rushdie’s new novel.
On August 12, while he was about to start a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York, Rushdie was attacked by a man who rushed onto the stage and stabbed him repeatedly, including in the neck and abdomen.
The suspect was identified as 24-yearold Hadi Matar of Fairview, New Jersey.
Rushdie’s agent, Andrew Wylie, confirmed that the author suffered stab injuries to the liver and hand. On October 23, Wylie reported that Rushdie had lost sight in one eye and the use of one hand, but survived the murder attempt.
Rushdie married his first wife, Clarissa Luard, in 1976, and had son Zafar three years later, then divorced in 1987.
Rushdie married the American Pulitzer Prize finalist, Marianne Wiggins, in 1988 and went into hiding with her after the Iranian fatwa which followed publication of The Satanic Verses. They were divorced in 1993.
Rushdie went on to marry Elizabeth West in 1994, and the couple had a son, Milan, in 1999. They divorced in 2004.
His last wife was the Indian American cookery writer Padma Lakshmi to whom he was married from 2004 to 2007, with the novelist bemoaning her in his memoirs as a “bad investment” who was overly narcissistic and ambitious.
Lakshmi hit back at Rushdie in hers, calling him “sexually needy” and insensitive to her endometriosis.
The Sunday Times said: “After divorcing his fourth wife, the model, writer and television personality Padma Lakshmi, in 2007, he was romantically linked to a string of high-profile younger women, including the actresses Olivia Wilde and Rosario Dawson.”
“Any time you see him, he is with two or three beautiful women,” Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair’s former editor-inchief and a friend of Rushdie, once said.
Rushdie believed his life had returned to normal and the threat he faced had practically disappeared.
Erica Wagner, the former Times literary editor, who had a drink with Rushdie about a week before the attack, said: “He was so relaxed and this was not a topic that seemed to be in his consciousness at all. He did not like to talk about it any more.”
In the aftermath of the attack, Matar’s mother, Silvana Fardos, said he had changed following a month-long visit to his divorced father in Lebanon. Previously outgoing and loving, Matar was suddenly a “moody introvert” who locked himself in the basement of the house that he shared with his mother and 14-year-old twin sisters.
Fardos, who has disowned her son, also said Matar became religious while in Lebanon. “One time he argued with me, asking why I encouraged him to get an education instead of focusing on religion,” she said. “He was angry that I didn’t introduce him to Islam from a young age.” After the stabbing, police revealed that social media accounts believed to belong to Matar showed sympathies for Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard.
In Britain, the boss of MI5 has given a warning that Iran has tried to assassinate or kidnap 10 Britons or UK-based individuals in the past 10 months alone. Ken McCallum, director general of the Security Service, said that Iranian spies, or their proxies, were engaging in “reckless action” to target dissidents and other individuals deemed enemies of the regime.
McCallum described Iran as the “state actor which most frequently crosses into terrorism”, adding that the ongoing protests and civil unrest had prompted the regime to “resort to violence to silence critics”.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have been accused of targeting two British-Iranian journalists at Iran International, an independent channel. The Metropolitan police warned them of a credible threat to life.
Meanwhile, Rushdie continues to be admired by his friends and fellow novelists for his resilience.
Penguin Random House said of Victory City: “The epic tale of a woman who breathes a fantastical empire into existence, only to be consumed by it over the centuries – from the transcendent imagination of Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie.”
“In the wake of an insignificant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms in 14th-century southern India, a nine-yearold girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history,” the publisher says.
“After witnessing the death of her mother, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for the goddess Parvati, who begins to speak out of the girl’s mouth. Granting her powers beyond Pampa Kampana’s comprehension, the goddess tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga – literally ‘victory city- the wonder of the world.
“Over the next two hundred and fifty years, Pampa Kampana’s life becomes deeply interwoven with Bisnaga’s, from its literal sowing out of a bag of magic seeds to its tragic ruination in the most human of ways: the hubris of those in power. Whispering Bisnaga and its citizens into existence, Pampa Kampana attempts to make good on the task that Parvati set for her: to give women equal agency in a patriarchal world.
“But all stories have a way of getting away from their creator, and Bisnaga is no exception. As years pass, rulers come and go, battles are won and lost, and allegiances shift, the very fabric of Bisnaga becomes an ever more complex tapestry – with Pampa Kampana at its centre.”