Salman Rushdie said he’s tired of being everyone’s “free speech Barbie” four years after the author survived an assassination attempt that left him blinded in his right eye. “It’s a subject I’m anxious to change,” Rushdie said Friday during a talk with the Atlantic’s George Packer at Tulane University’s New Orleans book festival. The attacker, Hadi Matar, was later sentenced to 25 years in prison for attempting to murder Rushdie. It marked the first fiction work Rushdie had written since Matar tried killing him. “Historically,” Rushdie remarked, “attacks on free expression have come from the rich and powerful, and the religious.

Source: The Guardian March 15, 2026 23:21 UTC