Writer Salman Rushdie, hospitalized in serious condition after being stabbed in the United States on Friday, must win the Nobel Prize for Literature, which will be awarded in October, argues French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy in the Sunday Journal (JDD). “I can’t imagine any other writer having the audacity today to deserve it more than him. The campaign starts now“Writes Bernard-Henri Lévy about the British author naturalized American, target since 1989 of a fatwa from Iran because of his book”satanic verses“.
According to the rules of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the supreme reward for a writer, the list of five finalists has already been decided since May, and the jury is currently reading all of their work. This list is confidential and it is therefore not possible to know if Salman Rushdie, often approached for the Nobel, is included. The announcement of the winner will take place at the beginning of October in Stockholm. “This writer punished for having written, for thirty years, free texts and which make free deserves compensation“, judge Bernard-Henri Lévy in the long text published by the JDD, entitled “Immortality of Salman Rushdie“.
According to Bernard-Henri Lévy,this act of absolute terror which, beyond his stabbed body and his books, is a terror on all the books and all the words of the world, calls for a resounding response“. Last year, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah. Referring to the “almost normal life» led by Salman Rushdie in New York, Bernard-Henri Lévy points out: «These kind of killers never let up“. “You can despise them, forget the bounty hunters or the madmen that history sets in pursuit of you, the pack does not forget you“, he adds.