“The most upsetting thing about the attack is that it has turned me once again into somebody I have tried very hard not to be. For more than thirty years I have refused to be defined by the fatwa and insisted on being seen as the author of my books—five before the fatwa and sixteen after it. I had just about managed it. When the last few books were published, people finally stopped asking me about the attack on The Satanic Verses and its author. And now here I am, dragged back into that unwanted subject. I think now I’ll never be able to escape it. No matter what I’ve already written or may now write, I’ll always be the guy who got knifed. The knife defines me. I’ll fight a battle against that, but I suspect I will lose.Living was my victory. But the meaning the knife had given my life was my defeat. In Victory City, my central character, Pampa Kampana, writes a mighty narrative poem in Sanskrit, named Jayaparajaya, meaning “Victory and Defeat.” That could also be the title for the story of my life.”