NEW YORK – Salman Rushdie’s agent said the writer lost sight in one eye and the use of one hand after of the assault of a man who took the stage at a literary event in western New York in Augustaccording to a published report.
Literary agent Andrew Wylie told Spanish-language newspaper El Pais in an article published Saturday that Rushdie sustained three severe neck injuries and another 15 injuries to his chest and torso in the attack that blinded him in one eye and left him. left a disabled hand.
Rushdie, 75, spent years in hiding after Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a 1989 edict, a fatwa, demanding his death following the publication of his novel “Satanic Verses”, which some Muslims consider blasphemous. . For the past two decades, Rushdie has traveled freely.
Hadi Matar, 24, of Fairview, New Jersey, was jailed after pleading not guilty to attempted murder and assault in the August 12 attack on Rushdie while being presented at the Chautauqua Institution, a rural facility 55 miles from Southwest Buffalo. which is known for its summer lecture series.
After the attack, Rushdie was treated in a Pennsylvania hospital, where he was briefly put on a ventilator to recover from what Wylie told El País was a “brutal attack” that severed the nerves in his arm.
Wylie told the paper he couldn’t tell if Rushdie stayed in the hospital or discuss where he was.
“He’ll live … that’s what’s important,” Wylie said.
The attack was along the lines of what Rushie and his agent thought was the “main danger … a random person who came out of nowhere and attacked,” Wylie told El País.
“So you can’t protect yourself from this because it’s totally unexpected and illogical,” he said.
Wylie told the paper it was like the murder of Beatles member John Lennon. Lennon was shot dead by Mark David Chapman outside his Manhattan apartment building on December 8, 1980, just hours after the singer signed an autograph for Chapman.
In a prison interview with the New York Post, Matar said he didn’t like Rushdie and praised Khomeini. Iran denied involvement in the attack.
