For 10 years, the newly knighted Sir Salman Rushdie lived under threat of death from a fatwa, an experience he finds "tedious" to recount. But getting tapped on the shoulder with a sword by a frail grandmother? That's what really scares him. "It was a little terrifying really, because it's so easy to foul it up," he told Radar about receiving his knighthood from the Queen last week. "You're supposed to back away from her, and I almost turned. I probably would've been executed on the spot," he quipped. "The worst part about it is they don't give you any snacks."

Rushdie was in New York—chatting with Middlesex author Jeffrey Eugenides at the New York Public Library—to promote his new book, The Enchantress of Florence, a novel about both 16th century India and High Renaissance Europe. And something about a beautiful woman who's been brainwashed. Wait—it's about ex-wife Padma Lakshmi?

Talking about the past may not interest Rushdie, but you know what does? An
unprovoked attack on the author of the The Da Vinci Code. "Should you kill people for writing books? My view is no. Even Dan Brown must live. And, I suppose, write," Rushdie told a tittering crowd.