Salman Rushdie has lost vision in one eye and the use of one hand following the attack he suffered at a literary event in New York on 12th August, his agent confirmed. Rushdie, who has been on the receiving end of death threats and a £2.5m bounty for decades after his novel The Satanic Verses was published in 1988, was stabbed over a dozen times as he prepared to give a lecture on artistic freedom and the role of America as a safe haven for writers at the Chautauqua Institution.
Up to now, the true extent of the 75-year-old author’s injuries had been unclear, but agent Andrew Wylie revealed just how profound the assault was to Spanish newspaper El País:
“[Rushdie has] lost the sight of one eye,” Wylie explained. “He had three serious wounds in his neck, one hand is incapacitated because the nerves in his arms were cut, and he has about 15 more wounds in his chest and torso… it was a brutal attack.”
The New York-based agent declined to disclose if the author was still in hospital, stating the most important thing was that Rushdie was going to survive: “I can’t give any information about his whereabouts. He’s going to live… that’s the more important thing.”
Wylie explains that he and Rushdie had explored the possibility of such an attack despite the novelist telling an interviewer how he felt his life was “very normal again” just two weeks before the incident: “The principal danger that he faced so many years after the fatwa was imposed is from a random person coming out of nowhere and attacking.”
The man accused and charged over the attack, Hadi Matar, 24, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree attempted murder and assault charges after appearing in court on 18th August.
Words by Sue Nolan
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