“Knife is not just a personal narrative. It is also a reaffirmation of Rushdie’s commitment to the fight for ‘the idea of freedom-Thomas Paine’s idea, the Enlightenment idea, John Stuart Mill’s idea’ against its many enemies, whether left or right, progressive or reactionary. He also reaffirms his secularism and his atheism: ‘My godlessness remains intact. That isn’t going to change in this second-chance life.'” What Sharp writes here is all true.

Also, Sharp writes: “In one powerful chapter, Rushdie imagines a conversation between himself and the A., and the A. is revealed as the nameless loser he undoubtedly is.” Here I would give a slightly different answer. After all A. as a person is probably a loser. As a person, he will probably be sentenced to a long custodial sentence. But as a type, as a representative of jihadist Islam, he is not a “loser” at all. Rather, as a type, he is a “winner.” At least for now. Liberal-democratic states have not, for now, been able to find a solution in effectively defusing the individuals and ideologies that bury these societies. As a militantly aggressive ideology, jihadist Islam has proven very effective. Again: for the time being.

Rushdie, however, sees it as follows in the quote quoted by Sharp: “You are simply irrelevant to me. And from now on, for the rest of your days, you will be irrelevant to everyone else. I’m glad I have my life, and not yours. And my life will go on.'”
Again, that’s all accurate from Rushde’s perspective personally, but as a society, we are not at all done with “A.” And, if you think about that a little longer, even Rushdie is not done with “A.” After all, “A.” may soon be in prison, but “A.” has many friends who are in competition in exactly the same way as “A.”. Perhaps more friends than Rushdie has. For Rushdie’s friends are perhaps a dying group. Hitchens is dead. Not by a jihadist, but by cancer. As is Martin Amis. But many contemporary literary writers are politically correct or woke to the bone. Who, like Matar, wonder: why so provocative? Didn’t Rushdie bring it all on himself?

Sharp follows Rushie in Rushie’s view of himself. Sharp writes: “Like Rushdie’s latest novel Victory City, Knife is a humanist triumph.” Is it? Has humanism triumphed here? Or, on the contrary, does humanism as a social phenomenon prove weak in the face of the forces that seek to destroy it?

Further, “In the end, Knife is Rushdie’s greatest victory.”
Yes, in the sense that Rushdie as an individual proved himself capable of going on with his life and continuing to write.
But no, because the actual subject that hangs over Knife like a dark cloud, the power and threat of radical Islam, feels it must remain silent.