Yet Rushdie hasn’t shied away from expressing himself on the subject; he served as the president of the free-speech organization PEN America from 2004 to 2006, and in 2024 he published a memoir, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder. When pressed by Packer, he spoke about literary censorship in all of its forms. “Historically,” he said, “attacks on free expression have come from the rich and powerful, and the religious.” But sometimes the squashing of speech can appear in other guises. “Coming from a more liberal background, there now seems to be a different kind of problem. One is self-censorship—I think particularly if you’re a young writer now,” worried about opprobrium for unpopular opinions or cultural appropriation. (Age can apparently be a salve to this: “I’m so old I don’t give a damn,” he joked.)