“He is off the ventilator, so the road to recovery has begun,” his agent, Andrew Wylie, wrote in an email to Reuters. “It will be a long time coming; the injuries are serious, but his condition is moving in the right direction.” Rushdie, 75, was due to give a lecture on artistic freedom at the Chautauqua Foundation in western New York when police say a 24-year-old man rushed the stage and stabbed him. The Indian-born author has been living with a bounty on his head since his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses prompted Iran to urge Muslims to kill him. Amid death threats, he spent nine years in hiding under a British government protection program in the 1990s. The suspect in the attack, Hadi Matar of Fairview, NJ, pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder and assault at a court appearance on Saturday, his court-appointed attorney, Nathaniel Barone, told Reuters. After hours of surgery, Rushdie had been placed on a ventilator and had been unable to speak since Friday night, Wylie said in an earlier update on the novelist’s condition, adding that he is likely to lose an eye and have damage to nerves in his hand and wounds in his liver. Rushdie tends to be attacked Friday at the Chautauqua Foundation in Chautauqua, New York For more than 30 years, the award-winning author has faced death threats over his novel The Satanic Verses. (Joshua Goodman/The Associated Press) Wylie did not elaborate on Rushdie’s health in his email on Sunday. “Although his life-changing injuries are serious, his usual sharp and defiant sense of humor remains intact,” Rushdie’s son, Zafar Rushdie, said in a statement Sunday, which noted that the author remains in critical condition. condition. The family’s statement also expressed gratitude for “members of the public who bravely rushed to his defence”, as well as the police, doctors and “the outpouring of love and support from around the world”.
Writers, politicians condemn the attack
The stabbing was condemned by writers and politicians around the world as an attack on freedom of expression. In a statement on Saturday, US President Joe Biden praised the “universal ideals” of truth, courage and resilience embodied by Rushdie and his work. “These are the building blocks of any free and open society,” Biden said. Writer and long-time friend Ian McEwan called Rushdie “an inspirational champion of persecuted writers and journalists”, and actor-writer Kal Penn called him a role model “for a whole generation of artists, especially many of us in the South Asian diaspora”. A general view shows UPMC Hamot Surgery Center in Erie, Penn., on Saturday, where author Salman Rushdie is recovering. (Jorge Ouzon/AFP/Getty Images) Neither local nor federal authorities released additional details about the investigation Saturday. Police said on Friday that they had not ascertained a motive for the attack. An initial review of Matar’s social media accounts indicated he was sympathetic to Shiite extremism and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), though no definitive links had been found, according to NBC New York.
Iran’s newspapers praise the attack
Rushdie, who was born in India to a Muslim family and lived in Britain and the US, is known for his surreal and satirical prose, beginning with his Booker Prize-winning 1981 novel Midnight’s Children, in which he sharply criticized the of India. minister, Indira Gandhi. Infused with magical realism, The Satanic Verses drew outrage from some Muslims who considered elements of the novel to be blasphemous. On Sunday, Iran’s state-run Iran Daily praised the attack on the author as “implementation of divine decree.” Another hard-line newspaper, Kayhan, called it “divine revenge” that will partly appease Muslim anger.
