Salman Rushdie ‘on the road to recovery,’ says agent

Salman Rushdie is “on the road to recovery”, his agent confirmed on Sunday, two days after the author of “The Satanic Verses” was seriously injured in a stabbing attack at a New York conference.

The announcement followed news that the lauded writer was removed from a fan on Saturday and was able to speak. Literary agent Andrew Wylie warned that while Rushdie’s “condition is headed in the right direction,” his recovery will be a long one. Rushdie, 75, suffered liver damage and severed nerves in his arm and eye that he would likely lose, Wylie previously said.

“Although his life-changing injuries are severe, his usual feisty and defiant sense of humor remains intact,” Rushdie’s son, Zafar Rushdie, said in a statement Sunday that stressed the perpetrator remains in critical condition. The family’s statement also expressed gratitude for the “audience members who bravely jumped to her defense,” as well as the police, doctors, and “the outpouring of love and support.”

Hadi Matar, 24, of Fairview, New Jersey, pleaded not guilty Saturday to charges of attempted murder and assault in what a prosecutor called “a pre-planned, unprovoked, targeted attack” at the Chautauqua Institution of the Western New York, a nonprofit retirement and educational center.

The attack was met with global shock and outrage, along with praise for the man who, for more than three decades, including nine years in hiding under the protection of the British government, has withstood death threats and a $3 million reward for his murder. head. “The Satanic Verses”.

“It’s an attack on his body, his life and all the values ​​he stood for,” Henry Reese, 73, told The Associated Press. The co-founder of Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum was onstage with Rushdie and suffered a cut to his forehead, bruises and other minor injuries. They had planned to discuss the writers’ need for safety and freedom of expression.

Authors, activists, and government officials cited Rushdie’s courage and longstanding defense of free speech in the face of intimidation. Writer and longtime friend Ian McEwan called Rushdie “an inspiring advocate for persecuted writers and journalists” and actor and author Kal Penn called him a role model, “especially many of us in the South Asian diaspora.”

“Salman Rushdie, with his vision of humanity, with his unrivaled sense of history, with his refusal to be intimidated or silenced, represents essential and universal ideals,” US President Joe Biden said in a statement on Tuesday. Saturday. “Truth. Courage. Resilience. The ability to share ideas without fear.”

Rushdie, who was born in India to a Muslim family and has lived in Britain and the US, is known for his surreal and satirical prose, beginning with his 1981 Booker Prize-winning novel “Midnight’s Children,” in which he harshly criticized the then-Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi.

Imbued with magical realism, 1988’s “The Satanic Verses” drew the ire of some Muslims who considered elements of the novel blasphemous.

They believed that Rushdie insulted the Prophet Muhammad by naming a character Mahound, a medieval corruption of “Muhammad”. The character was a prophet in a city called Jahilia, which in Arabic refers to the time before the advent of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula. Another sequence includes prostitutes who share names with some of Muhammad’s nine wives. The novel also implies that Muhammad, and not Allah, may have been the true author of the Koran.

[Con información de The Associated Press]

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