Why Rushdie refers to his attacker as "The A"

In Salman Rushdie’s new memoir, “Knife,” he writes about being attacked and nearly killed during a public lecture in 2022, and refers to his attacker as “A.”

Of his choice not to use the assailant’s full name, Rushdie told NPR: “Margaret Thatcher used to say, about the IRA, that she wanted to deny them the oxygen of publicity. And I thought, well I think that too about this guy.”

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