US: Book sales for Sir Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses have surged after the author was stabbed at an event in the US last week.
The contentious 1988 book rose to number eight on Amazon’s chart of most-sold fiction books of the week and was sold out by other booksellers. The sales spike appeared to be somewhat driven by readers showing solidarity with Sir Salman, who has been the target of death threats for decades including a fatwa, over the book.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the sold-out paperback edition of the book was the No. 2 bestselling book on Amazon’s Contemporary Fiction and Literature chart.
Meanwhile, the New Jersey man accused of stabbing Salman Rushdie told the New York Post in an interview published on Wednesday that he was “surprised” the author had survived the attack.
“When I heard he survived, I was surprised, I guess,” Hadi Matar, 24, told the tabloid, which said they held a video interview with the jailed suspect.
The suspected assailant, who has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder charges, did not say whether he was inspired by the 1989 Edict, or Fatwa, issued under Iran’s former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, that ordered Muslims to kill the writer for what he deemed the blasphemous nature of the book “The Satanic Verses.” Matar told the paper he had “read a couple pages” of Rushdie’s novel. – SKY NEWS, JAPAN TODAY