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A really quite gripping account of the author's brush with a violent, public death. Utterly shocking, even if a part of him may long have expected it. ("It's you," he thought, as the assassin ran toward him at a crouch). Couldn't put this down. I'm awed by Rushdie's courage and talent, not to mention deeply impressed by the fact that he has a book out less than two years after this experience, written while he was still going through the ordeal of recovery. The author muses on many subjects of current interest, including the freedom found in privacy, the seemingly lost cause of free speech as it's increasingly 'owned' by the authoritarian right, and renounced by the authoritarian left. Of fascination to me were the many authors, novels and poems referenced in this short book � the rich seams of literary wonder in which Rushdie learned his craft and matured as an author. Occasionally, a I got the sense of a rather jupiterian ego, but how many of us would have survived what he has without believing absolutely in himself and in the love of those around him. It's hard to imagine any other seventy-five-year-old being stabbed fifteen times and living to tell the tale in a superb book.