Salman Rushdie lost the sight in one eye and the use of one hand after being attacked on stage during a literary event in West New York in August, his agent said.
Andrew Wylie, who represents literary giants such as Saul Bellow and Roberto Bolaño, described the extent of Rushdie’s injuries in the “brutal” attack in an interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais.
Wylie described the author’s injuries as “deep” and noted the loss of vision in one eye. “He had three serious wounds to his neck. One hand is disabled because the nerves in his arm are severed. And he has about 15 more wounds to his chest and torso.”
The agent declined to say whether the “Satanic Verses” author, 75, had been in the hospital for more than two months after police said a 24-year-old New Jersey man stabbed the author in the neck and torso. was, before it was given to Rushdie. A lecture at the Chautauqua Institution, a retreat about 12 miles (19 km) from Lake Erie.
Wylie said at the time that the novelist was taken to hospital after suffering serious injuries in the attack, including nerve damage to his arm, lacerations to his liver and the possible loss of an eye.
The attack came 33 years after Iran’s then-supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa, or religious fatwa, ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie a few months after the “Satanic Verses” were published. was demanded. Some Muslims saw the verses about the Prophet of Islam (PBUH) in this novel as blasphemous.
Rushdie, who was born in India to a Muslim Kashmiri family, lives with grace on his head, and has spent nine years in hiding under British police protection.
While the pro-reformist government of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami distanced itself from the fatwa in the late 1990s, the multimillion-dollar bounty on Rushdie’s head continued to grow and the fatwa was never lifted.
Khomeini’s successor, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was suspended from Twitter in 2019 for saying that the fatwa against Rushdie was “irrevocable.”
The man accused of attacking the novelist has pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder and assault. He is being held without bail at a Western New York jail.
