In a long text published by the “Journal du dimanche”, the French philosopher pleads for the author who was attacked with a knife on Friday to receive the supreme literary award.
Writer Salman Rushdie, hospitalized after being stabbed in the United States on Friday, must obtain the Nobel Prize for Literature, which will be awarded in October, pleads the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy in the Sunday newspaper.
“I can’t imagine any other writer having the audacity today to deserve it more than him. The campaign begins now”, writes Bernard-Henri Lévy about the British naturalized American author, target since 1989 of a fatwa from Iran because of his book “The 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.
Already anticipated in the past
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 him, “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 for Literature was awarded to the Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah. Referring to the “almost normal life” that Salman Rushdie led in New York, Bernard-Henri Lévy underlines: “These kind of killers never let go”. “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.
Attacked with a knife as he prepared to give a conference in New York State on Friday, Salman Rushdie was taken to hospital in serious condition. On Saturday, his agent gave reassuring news to the American press, declaring that the writer was no longer on life support and that he was better.