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Salman Rushdie lost the sight in one eye and the use of one hand after an attack on him onstage at a literary event in western New York in August, his agent said.
Andrew Wylie, who represents such literary giants as Saul Bellow and Roberto Bolano, described the extent of the injuries Rushdie suffered in the “brutal” attack in an interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais.
Wylie described the author’s injuries as “profound”, noting loss of vision in one eye. “He had three serious injuries to his neck. He has one hand disabled because the nerves in his arm were severed. And he has about 15 more injuries to his chest and torso.”
The agent declined to say whether the 75-year-old “The Satanic Verses” author was still in hospital more than two months after police said a 24-year-old New Jersey man stabbed the writer in the neck and torso. just before Rushdie was to give a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York.
The novelist was rushed to hospital after suffering serious injuries in the attack, including nerve damage in his arm, liver injuries and the probable loss of an eye, Wylie said at the time.
The attack came 33 years after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then the Supreme Leader of Iran, issued a fatwa, or religious edict, calling on Muslims to assassinate Rushdie a few months after the publication of ‘The Satanic Verses’. Some Muslims considered some passages in the novel about the Prophet Muhammad to be blasphemous.
Rushdie, who was born in India to a Kashmiri Muslim family, has lived with a bounty on his head and spent nine years in hiding under the protection of British police.
Although the pro-reform Iranian government of President Mohammad Khatami distanced itself from the fatwa in the late 1990s, the multi-million dollar bounty hanging on Rushdie’s head continued to grow and the fatwa never got up.
Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was suspended from Twitter in 2019 for saying the fatwa against Rushdie was “irrevocable”.
The man accused of attacking the novelist has pleaded not guilty to second-degree attempted murder and assault charges. He is being held without bond in a western New York jail.
With Reuters; adapted from its original English version
