The Pink Wooly Mammoth in the Corner / A Conversation with Rachel Eliza Griffiths

 The Pink Wooly Mammoth in the Corner: 

A Conversation with Rachel Eliza Griffiths

BY
GABRIELLA SOUZA
JANUARY 27, 2026

When Rachel Eliza Griffiths’ memoir The Flower Bearers (Random House, 2026) begins in September 2021, unease underlies the joyfulness of a wedding celebration. While Griffiths delights in having her hands decorated with henna and staying up chatting with her sister the night before her wedding to fellow writer Salman Rushdie, her closest friend and chosen sister, poet Kalimah Aisha Moon, has not arrived to participate in the festivities. It isn’t until after the ceremony that Griffiths learns that Moon suddenly died, and the discovery sends her spiraling into grief. Eleven months later, as she pieces together her life as a newlywed without her friend’s presence, an attack nearly kills Rushdie. During an appearance in Chautauqua, New York, the renowned writer sustained stab wounds to his face, neck, and torso, resulting in partial blindness and nerve damage. 

‘Ours was a love story, not an attempted murder story’ / Rachel Eliza Griffiths on the day her husband, Salman Rushdie, was stabbed

Salman Rushdie and Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Photograph: Brigitte Lacombe

‘Ours was a love story, not an attempted murder story’: Rachel Eliza Griffiths on the day her husband, Salman Rushdie, was stabbed

They had only been married for 11 months when the world-famous novelist was attacked by a frenzied knifeman. His wife remembers the intense drama of hearing the news, and the traumatic aftermath

Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Saturday 27 April 2024

Iwoke early and alone on the sunny morning of Friday 12 August 2022. I was having coffee at the moment my husband, the Indian novelist Salman Rushdie, was nearly killed in a stabbing on stage in Chautauqua, New York.

Salman Rushdie: ‘in spirit, he really is unchanged’. Photograph: Rachel Eliza Griffiths

his article is more than 2 years old

Review

Knife by Salman Rushdie review – a life interrupted

While the author’s account of the 2022 murder attempt is a courageous defence of free speech, it is also shot through with self-regard, making it a sometimes hard book to admire

Rachel Eliza Griffiths

This article is more than 3 years old

Interview

Writer Rachel Eliza Griffiths: ‘There’s a strength you don’t realise you have access to’

This article is more than 3 years old

The poet and debut novelist on inheriting her mother’s ferocity, gun violence in the US, and her determination to help her husband, Salman Rushdie, recover after he was stabbed on stage last year