“It’s a subject I’m anxious to change,” the author Salman Rushdie told the Atlantic staff writer George Packer at the New Orleans Book Festival on Friday. If you know anything about Rushdie, and you probably do, the subject he’s referring to is obvious. In 2022, Rushdie was publicly attacked onstage, and nearly stabbed to death, in front of an audience at the Chautauqua Institution, in New York—all because he wrote a book.

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Rushdie has been living under mortal threat ever since Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the murder of the writer, in 1989. The theocratic ruler’s objection was that Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses was offensive to Islam, and therefore punishable by death. Over years spent in hiding and many more living openly, Rushdie has become a physical manifestation of free expression—a role with which he seemed mildly annoyed at the book festival, sardonically calling himself “Free Speech Barbie.”

“I don’t feel symbolic,” he told Packer in front of a full crowd. “I feel actual. I feel like I’m a working writer trying to make his work,” he said. “When you’ve written 23 books, it’s a little frustrating to be known not even for a book, but for something that happened to a book in 1989—when that was my fifth published book and this is my 23rd. Can we please talk about books? I keep trying to say.”

[Read: All because Salman Rushdie wrote a book]

Yet Rushdie hasn’t shied away from expressing himself on the subject; he served as the president of the free-speech organization PEN America from 2004 to 2006, and in 2024 he published a memoir, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder. When pressed by Packer, he spoke about literary censorship in all of its forms. “Historically,” he said, “attacks on free expression have come from the rich and powerful, and the religious.” But sometimes the squashing of speech can appear in other guises. “Coming from a more liberal background, there now seems to be a different kind of problem. One is self-censorship—I think particularly if you’re a young writer now,” worried about opprobrium for unpopular opinions or cultural appropriation. (Age can apparently be a salve to this: “I’m so old I don’t give a damn,” he joked.)

Rushdie’s festival appearance was tied to a happier occasion, and one he was happier to talk about: A short-story collection published in November, The Eleventh Hour, representing the first fiction he’s written since he was gravely injured in the attack. (His 2023 novel, Victory City, had been completed before the incident.) Rushdie described the relief he felt when he was able to return to his craft. “After I finished writing the memoir, almost immediately, it’s like a door in my head opened and the stories came back,” he said. “I’d been really worried that I wouldn’t be able to write fiction anymore,” he added, “because of trauma and the shocking impact of what happened.”

His new stories draw inspiration from a cast of characters that perhaps only Rushdie could summon in a single book: Franz Kafka, Francisco Goya, Hieronymus Bosch, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Dickens, Alan Turing, and quite a few others. He also teased his current preoccupation with a more obscure figure, possibly the subject of his next project. Enheduanna, a high priestess from Sumer who is credited with being the first person to sign her work, seems to be a fitting obsession for a writer who knows the stakes of authorship.

Watch the full interview here:

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Washington: Senior US Senate Democrats have sharply criticised the Trump administration’s decision to pause sanctions on Russian oil, warning the move could enrich Moscow while doing little to ease rising energy costs for Americans.

US Senator Mark R. Warner, Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said the move followed what he described as the economic fallout of the administration’s war with Iran.

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“Trump’s war of choice with Iran has come with immeasurable cost to American lives – with 13 servicemembers killed and hundreds more injured – and passed enormous costs on to working families,” Warner said.

He said the administration had failed to anticipate major consequences of the conflict, including disruptions to global oil supply.

“Critically, the Trump administration failed to anticipate or plan for many of the inevitable consequences of this attack – including the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which has cut off 20 per cent of the world's oil and gas supply,” Warner said.

He added that energy prices had surged in recent weeks.

“Over the past two weeks, gas prices have skyrocketed more than 60 cents a gallon, spiking prices at the pump and increasing costs for flights, groceries, and more.”

Warner said the administration’s decision to pause sanctions on Russian oil would have little impact on prices but could boost Moscow’s revenues.

“Trump’s decision to pause sanctions on Russian oil will barely make a dent in skyrocketing gas prices, but will enrich Putin as he wages his bloody war against Ukraine,” he said.

“Particularly given Russia’s close relationship with Iran, this short-sighted giveaway to Putin strengthens our adversaries, undercuts Ukraine’s fight for freedom, and leaves American families footing the bill with higher prices.”

Other senior Senate Democrats also voiced concern about the decision. Senators Jeanne Shaheen, Elizabeth Warren, and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said the move could benefit Russia financially.

“President Trump’s decision to provide sanctions relief to Russia is yet another example of how Putin has been one of the prime beneficiaries of President Trump’s poorly conceived and executed war against Iran,” the lawmakers said in a joint statement.

They said the decision could generate significant new revenue for Moscow.

“Russia is reportedly providing Iran intelligence to target and kill US servicemembers and the Trump Administration’s response has been to loosen pressure and help facilitate a windfall of $150 million each day for its war machine.”

The senators also questioned whether the administration followed congressional requirements regarding sanctions policy.

“This action also raises real concerns about the Treasury Secretary’s shifting explanations for his use of sanctions authorities and whether the Trump Administration is again flouting the requirement under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act to notify Congress before relaxing sanctions on the Kremlin,” they said.

“The deliberate skirting of Congress raises serious questions about whether the Administration is seeking to avoid triggering privileged votes of disapproval on sanctions relief for Russia and avoid accountability for his gift to Putin.”

They also referenced earlier testimony by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

“Just last month, Secretary Bessent testified under oath that Treasury’s sanctions on two Russian oil companies were so significant that they made up for the Trump Administration’s abandonment of all regular sanctions targeting for a year,” the statement said.

“Now, he wants us to believe that relaxing those very same sanctions—as well as sanctions on a range of other Russian entities like additional oil majors, traders, intermediaries, and shadow fleet operators—is a ‘narrowly tailored’ action, even as it helps those entities score windfall profits.”

IranThe lawmakers said the Treasury Secretary should testify before Congress to explain the decision.

“Secretary Bessent needs to testify because Congress and the American people deserve immediate answers.”

(Except for the headline, this article has not been edited by FPJ's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)

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