10 must-read nonfiction books like Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie

Cover of Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie

Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

By: Salman Rushdie

4.10

Format: 209 pages, Hardcover

From internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply pers…

"Waiting is thinking, and to think deeply is, very often, to change one’s mind."

-Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

"Waiting is thinking, and to think deeply is, very often, to change one’s mind."

-Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

"I don’t usually think of my books as prophecies. I’ve had some trouble with prophets in my life, and I’m not applying for the job."

-Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

"I don’t usually think of my books as prophecies. I’ve had some trouble with prophets in my life, and I’m not applying for the job."

-Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

If you liked the nonfiction plot in Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie , here is a list of 10 books like this:

Cover of The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson

1. The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

By: Erik Larson

4.24

Format: 565 pages, Hardcover

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal fi… read more

Similar categories in Erik Larson's The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War book and Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

  • nonfiction
  • audiobook
"A house divided against itself cannot stand."

-Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

"Lincoln on a sofa was like a ship's mast on a barstool, poised in an uneasy equilibrium between relaxation and structural collapse."

-Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

"They were convinced that Britain, once confronted with the loss of Southern cotton, would ally itself with the Confederacy—the “cotton is king"

-Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

"South Carolina is too small for a Republic, and too big for an insane asylum. [James L. Petigru (1789-1863), following the state's vote to secede from the Union in 1860]"

-Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

Cover of Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley

2. Grief Is for People

By: Sloane Crosley

3.91

Format: 208 pages, Hardcover

Following the death of her closest friend, Sloane Crosley explores multiple kinds of loss in this d… read more

Similar categories in Sloane Crosley's Grief Is for People book and Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

  • biography
  • memoir
  • psychology
  • biography memoir
  • nonfiction
  • essays
  • audiobook
"Grief is for people, not things."

-Sloane Crosley, Grief Is for People

"Suicide is a tax on human consciousness."

-Sloane Crosley, Grief Is for People

"How will he know you loved him," she asks, "unless you try to destroy yourself?"

-Sloane Crosley, Grief Is for People

"Pictures should be of what you see, not of what the world sees when it sees you."

-Sloane Crosley, Grief Is for People

Cover of James by Percival Everett

3. James

By: Percival Everett

4.54

Format: 303 pages, Hardcover

A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , both harrowing and f… read more

Similar categories in Percival Everett's James book and Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

  • audiobook
Cover of All Fours by Miranda July

4. All Fours

By: Miranda July

3.81

Format: 336 pages, Hardcover

The New York Times–bestselling author of The First Bad Man returns with an irreverently sexy, tende… read more

Similar categories in Miranda July's All Fours book and Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

  • audiobook
"But maybe the road split between: a life spent longing vs. a life that was continually surprising"

-Miranda July, All Fours

"Maybe we shouldn't do that," Jordi said. "Flatten ourselves like that. Erratic doesn't have to mean crazy or irresponsible. Shouldn't we be normalizing change?"

-Miranda July, All Fours

"I guess any calling, no mater what it is, is a kind of unresolved ache," I said, giving in to knowing more than him. "It's a problem that you can't fix, but there is some relief in knowing you will c…"

-Miranda July, All Fours

"For me lying created just the right amount of problems and what you saw was just one of my four or five faces- each real, each with different needs. The only dangerous lie was one that asked me to co…"

-Miranda July, All Fours

Cover of Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie

5. Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

By: Salman Rushdie

4.10

Format: 209 pages, Hardcover

From internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply pers… read more

Similar categories in Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder book and Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

  • biography
  • memoir
  • true crime
  • psychology
  • autobiography
  • biography memoir
  • nonfiction
  • essays
  • crime
  • audiobook
"Waiting is thinking, and to think deeply is, very often, to change one’s mind."

-Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

"I don’t usually think of my books as prophecies. I’ve had some trouble with prophets in my life, and I’m not applying for the job."

-Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

"To have a room of one’s own, one must have money. (I don’t think Virginia Woolf ever went to India, but her dictum stands, even there, even for men.)"

-Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

"An intimacy of strangers. That's a phrase I've sometimes used to express the joyful thing that happens in the act of reading, that happy union of the interior lives of author and reader."

-Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

Cover of Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

6. Wandering Stars

By: Tommy Orange

3.89

Format: 315 pages, Hardcover

The eagerly awaited follow-up to Pulitzer Prize-finalist Tommy Orange’s breakout best seller There … read more

Similar categories in Tommy Orange's Wandering Stars book and Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

  • audiobook
"And in the year 1924 Indian citizenship will have been granted, even though they will mean to dissolve tribes by giving citizenship, dissolve being another word for disappearance, a kind of chemical …"

-Tommy Orange, Wandering Stars

Cover of Long Island (Eilis Lacey, #2) by Colm Tóibín

7. Long Island (Eilis Lacey, #2)

By: Colm Tóibín

3.82

Format: 294 pages, Hardcover

From the beloved, critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author comes a spectacularly movi… read more

Similar categories in Colm Tóibín's Long Island (Eilis Lacey, #2) book and Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

  • audiobook
Cover of Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

8. Martyr!

By: Kaveh Akbar

4.24

Format: 352 pages, Hardcover

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves… read more

Similar categories in Kaveh Akbar's Martyr! book and Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

  • audiobook
Cover of Table for Two by Amor Towles

9. Table for Two

By: Amor Towles

4.26

Format: 464 pages, Hardcover

From the bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway, A Gentleman in Moscow, and Rules of Civility, a… read more

Similar categories in Amor Towles's Table for Two book and Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

  • audiobook
"And though she couldn’t remember the exact reference and whether it was from mythology or the Bible, she knew instinctively as they approached the pier’s limit she mustn’t look back."

-Amor Towles, Table for Two

"It is a funny aspect of life, thought Charlie, how a group of grown people can convince themselves to do something that none of them really want to do. They start by talking an idea into existence. O…"

-Amor Towles, Table for Two

Cover of Wild Houses by Colin  Barrett

10. Wild Houses

By: Colin Barrett

3.78

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

A darkly funny and deeply moving debut novel about crimes of desperation, dreams abandoned, and sma… read more

Similar categories in Colin Barrett's Wild Houses book and Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

  • crime
  • audiobook
"What you are in, Dev, is a holding pattern, only you're not holding out for anything."

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

"All boys, all children, are capable of cruelty at the right juncture of opportunity and circumstance, but only a few become committed prodigies of sadism..."

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

"In the dream, exactly as he had in real life, he sensed the slow, inexorable approach of the shapeless, prospectless days to come, days when there would be no need to get out of bed or brush his teet…"

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

"He looked around the empty kitchen. A part of him wanted this of course. A part of him had always wanted this, to be alone, away from even the prospect of any demand upon him to talk, to interact, to…"

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

Cover of Sociopath: A Memoir by Patric Gagne

11. Sociopath: A Memoir

By: Patric Gagne

3.84

Format: 368 pages, Hardcover

A fascinating, revelatory memoir revealing the author’s struggle to come to terms with her own soci… read more

Similar categories in Patric Gagne's Sociopath: A Memoir book and Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

  • biography
  • memoir
  • psychology
  • autobiography
  • biography memoir
  • nonfiction
  • audiobook
"In a universe where everything seemed to be associated with everything else, jazz was in a world all its own. The untethered notes didn't propel me backward in time or force me into imaginations of t…"

-Patric Gagne, Sociopath: A Memoir

"Regardless of whether they realized it, my parents, my friends, my teachers, my lovers—everyone, on some level—was uncomfortable with my limited emotion. Because it meant something sinister. Because,…"

-Patric Gagne, Sociopath: A Memoir

"I loved people. I truly did. But the way I loved was different than most. And, if I was being honest, not all that compatible. I didn’t need to get love in order to give love. I never had. I preferre…"

-Patric Gagne, Sociopath: A Memoir

"The more I paid attention, the more I noticed just how often 'apathy,' 'lack of feeling,' and the word 'sociopath' were associated with evil. Everywhere. From celebrated books like East of Eden and T…"

-Patric Gagne, Sociopath: A Memoir

Cover of Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel

12. Headshot

By: Rita Bullwinkel

3.63

Format: 224 pages, Hardcover

An electrifying debut novel from an “unusually gifted writer” (Lorrie Moore) about the radical inti… read more

Similar categories in Rita Bullwinkel's Headshot book and Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

  • audiobook
"The desire to please people is the desire to not be singular."

-Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot

"Tanya Maw's sister is two years older, the perfect age gap for wisdom transmission."

-Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot

"It can be intoxicating to play a sport that requires one to look in their opponent's eyes."

-Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot

"It's a warmth that she'll feel again very few times in her life. It's almost like love, but it has a surer, less desperate edge to it."

-Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot

Cover of This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud

13. This Strange Eventful History

By: Claire Messud

3.63

Format: 448 pages, Hardcover

An immersive, masterful story of a family born on the wrong side of history, from one of our finest… read more

Similar categories in Claire Messud's This Strange Eventful History book and Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

  • audiobook
"Family life, like playing chess, involved always thinking several steps ahead."

-Claire Messud, This Strange Eventful History

"Literature... Now, that's a religion I can believe in. That is perhaps my God."

-Claire Messud, This Strange Eventful History

"... she'd been a fool, enamored of a figment, had created the soul of a man who never existed -"

-Claire Messud, This Strange Eventful History

"All-U-Can Hi-way 4-Sale Thru. This American English thrilled him - its energy, its freedom, its carelessness."

-Claire Messud, This Strange Eventful History

Cover of My Friends by Hisham Matar

14. My Friends

By: Hisham Matar

4.34

Format: 399 pages, Hardcover

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Return , a luminous novel of friendship, family, and … read more

Similar categories in Hisham Matar's My Friends book and Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

"A vast distance exists between a protester and his slogan; the entire history of politics exists in that gap."

-Hisham Matar, My Friends

"For a writer, exile is prison, a severing from the source, and so, courageous or not, he dies in front of our eyes."

-Hisham Matar, My Friends

"She was older and all the more beautiful, had the weary tiredness of one who, in surrendering to her life, was ennobled by it."

-Hisham Matar, My Friends

"I walked off feeling an emptiness well up inside me. It seemed, for all the emptiness that it was, a presence. It made me want to run away, dive deeper into myself, into that cold desolation, to the …"

-Hisham Matar, My Friends

Cover of Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham

15. Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space

By: Adam Higginbotham

4.60

Format: 576 pages, Hardcover

The definitive, dramatic, minute-by-minute story of the Challenger disaster based on new archival r… read more

Similar categories in Adam Higginbotham's Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space book and Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

  • nonfiction
  • biography
  • audiobook
"When asked what he was thinking about when preparing for launch abroad his Mercury-Redstone rocket, Alan Shepard, the first American in space, had infamously replied, "The fact that every part of thi…"

-Adam Higginbotham, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space

"At the foot of the ladder, he [Gene Cernan Apollo 17] delivered the short speech he had memorized for the occasion. "Is like to just say what I believe history will record: That America's challenge o…"

-Adam Higginbotham, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space

Cover of Fi: A Memoir of My Son by Alexandra Fuller

16. Fi: A Memoir of My Son

By: Alexandra Fuller

4.01

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

“Fair to say, I was in a ribald state the summer before my fiftieth birthday.” And so begins Alexan… read more

Similar categories in Alexandra Fuller's Fi: A Memoir of My Son book and Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

  • biography
  • memoir
  • autobiography
  • biography memoir
  • nonfiction
  • audiobook
"...time is only as dense as the thoughts that you push through it."

-Alexandra Fuller, Fi: A Memoir of My Son

"You can give your child anything. You can give him his life, even, but not yours. And you can't give him his life back, once lost."

-Alexandra Fuller, Fi: A Memoir of My Son

"The way a pilot sees wind in clouds or a sailor reads currents in water, I look unconsciously for stories to remind me where I am, to remind me that whatever I'm going through, millions have been her…"

-Alexandra Fuller, Fi: A Memoir of My Son

"One of millions of mothers to have lost a child every year, fifteen thousand a day. If none of us suffered, where would we be? Without wise women is where; suffering brings wisdom. So, a gift, this s…"

-Alexandra Fuller, Fi: A Memoir of My Son

Cover of In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife by Sebastian Junger

17. In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife

By: Sebastian Junger

3.92

Format: 176 pages, Hardcover

A near-fatal health emergency leads to this powerful reflection on death—and what might follow—by t… read more

Similar categories in Sebastian Junger's In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife book and Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

  • nonfiction
  • biography
  • memoir
  • audiobook
"Everyone has a relationship with death whether they want one or not; refusing to think about death is its own kind of relationship. When we hear about another person's death, we are hearing a version…"

-Sebastian Junger, In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife

Cover of The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir by Griffin Dunne

18. The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir

By: Griffin Dunne

4.19

Format: 400 pages, Hardcover

At nine, Sean Connery saved him from drowning. At thirteen, desperate to hook up with Janis Joplin,… read more

Similar categories in Griffin Dunne's The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir book and Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

  • biography
  • memoir
  • true crime
  • autobiography
  • biography memoir
  • nonfiction
  • audiobook
"At the moment when Mrs. Griffin had been notified of her husband’s death, she was in bed with her lover at the Hotel del Coronado in California, and took the news that she was a widow rather well. Sh…"

-Griffin Dunne, The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir

Cover of Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

19. Long Island Compromise

By: Taffy Brodesser-Akner

3.88

Format: 464 pages, Hardcover

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An exhilarating novel about one American family, the dark moment that shatter… read more

Similar categories in Taffy Brodesser-Akner's Long Island Compromise book and Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

  • audiobook
Cover of On Call: A Doctor's Journey in Public Service by Anthony Fauci

20. On Call: A Doctor's Journey in Public Service

By: Anthony Fauci

4.59

Format: 464 pages, Hardcover

The memoir by the doctor who became a beacon of hope for millions through the COVID pandemic, and w… read more

Similar categories in Anthony Fauci's On Call: A Doctor's Journey in Public Service book and Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

  • nonfiction
  • biography
  • memoir
  • audiobook
Cover of Autocracy, Inc. by Anne Applebaum

21. Autocracy, Inc.

By: Anne Applebaum

4.28

Format: 224 pages, Hardcover

All of us have in our minds a cartoon image of what an autocratic state looks like, with a bad man … read more

Similar categories in Anne Applebaum's Autocracy, Inc. book and Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

  • crime
  • nonfiction
  • audiobook
"Americans who rarely think about Russia would be stunned to learn how much time Russian state television devotes to America’s culture wars, especially arguments over gender. Putin himself has display…"

-Anne Applebaum, Autocracy, Inc.

"Isolationism is an instinctive and even understandable reaction to the ugliness of the modern interconnected world. For some politicians in democracies, it will continue to offer a successful path to…"

-Anne Applebaum, Autocracy, Inc.

"The temptation of what is sometimes called realism—the belief that nations are solely motivated by a struggle for power, that they have eternal interests and permanent geopolitical orientations—is as…"

-Anne Applebaum, Autocracy, Inc.

20 must-read audiobook books like Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie

Transform Your Habits

The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

Erik Larson

4.24

Transform Your Habits

Grief Is for People

Sloane Crosley

3.91

Transform Your Habits

James

Percival Everett

4.54

Transform Your Habits

All Fours

Miranda July

3.81

View all the books

21 best-selling fiction books like Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

Transform Your Habits

James

Percival Everett

4.54

Transform Your Habits

North Woods

Daniel Mason

4.15

Transform Your Habits

Wandering Stars

Tommy Orange

3.89

Transform Your Habits

Real Americans

Rachel Khong

4.04

View all the books

Never miss a story from us, get weekly updates in your inbox.