Salman Rushdie publishing memoir, ‘Knife,’ about NY stabbing

Salman Rushdie announced Wednesday that he is releasing a book about the horrifying upstate New York knife attack by an Islamic fundamentalist that left him blind in his right eye and with a damaged left hand.

“This was a necessary book for me to write: a way to take charge of what happened and to answer violence with art,” the 76-year-old author said of his account of the onstage attack last summer at a literary event in Chautauqua.

The first-person memoir, “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder,” is a “searing book, and a reminder of words to make sense of the unthinkable,” according to Nihar Malaviya, CEO of its publisher, Penguin Random House.

“We are honored to publish it, and amazed at Salman’s determination to tell his story and to return to the work he loves.”

Rushdie was rushed onstage by a lone-wolf Islamic fanatic, who copped to the attack last summer in a jailhouse interview with The Post — but has since pleaded not guilty to charges of assault and attempted murder.

The author had previously been in hiding for a decade after Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for his death in 1989, labeling his book, “The Satanic Verses” blasphemous.

Rushdie earlier told The New Yorker that he felt the need to write about the horror before he was able to focus on fiction.

“This doesn’t feel third-person-ish to me,” Rushdie said of the attack. “I think when somebody sticks a knife into you, that’s a first-person story. That’s an ‘I’ story.”

Hadi Matar, 24, of Fairview, NJ, told The Post last year he had only read “two pages” of “The Satanic Verses” but had “respect” for the ayatollah.

“I think he’s a great person. That’s as far as I will say about that,” Matar said from the Chautauqua County Jail, adding that he was “surprised” Rushdie had survived the brutal assault.

Matar, who faces more than 30 years in prison, said he went to Chautauqua after learning of Rushdie’s appearance at the literary event.

“I don’t like the person. I don’t think he’s a very good person,” he said about Rushdie. “I don’t like him. I don’t like him very much.”

When asked by the New Yorker who was to blame for his attack, Rushdie was succinct.

“I blame him,” he said, referring to Matar.

The author had nothing but praise for the doctors, EMTs and firemen who responded to his medical emergency, and for his wife, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, and two grown sons.

“I’m lucky. What I really want to say is that my main overwhelming feeling is gratitude,” he said.

“At some point, I’d like to go back up there and say thank you.”

“Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder” is set to be published on April 16.

With Post wires.