I used to be fond of saying, I am an atheist but I believe in miracles, but Salmon Rushdie is an atheist who doesn’t, “but yes, my books do”, and he feels that his survival was the sort of magic from his books turned into fact. “The magic had become realism. Maybe my books saved my life.”

He also writes that optimism is “my great weakness and my great strength”, in his new book, Knife.

For me radical optimism is exactly the willingness to believe in miracles and one of the miracles in this case was that the man who attacked Rushdie on August 12, 2022, “had no idea how to kill a man with a knife”, the doctors told him.

And in hospital, when you’re recovering from surgery and your bowels finally move after a long period of inactivity, “everyone cheers up”, he writes.

And indeed, a bowel movement too can feel like a miracle.