Salman Rushdie has lost sight in one eye after attack, says agent

Agent says Salman Rushdie suffered ‘profound’ wounds in assault in August and has misplaced sight in a single eye and using a hand.

Salman Rushdie has misplaced sight in a single eye and using a hand following an assault on stage throughout a literary occasion in western New York in August, his agent stated.

Andrew Wylie instructed the Spanish language newspaper El Pais in an article revealed on Saturday that Rushdie, who’s 75 years outdated, suffered a “brutal” assault that left him with “profound” wounds.

“He’s misplaced the sight of 1 eye … He had three critical wounds in his neck. One hand is incapacitated as a result of the nerves in his arm have been lower. And he has about 15 extra wounds in his chest and torso,” Wylie stated.

The agent instructed the newspaper he couldn’t say whether or not Rushdie remained in a hospital or talk about his whereabouts.

“He’s going to dwell … That’s the essential factor,” Wylie stated.

Rushdie, who had obtained a number of demise threats after the publication of his The Satanic Verses, was attacked simply as he was about to offer a lecture at Chautauqua Establishment in New York state on August 12.

The novelist was rushed to the hospital after sustaining extreme accidents within the assault, together with nerve harm in his arm, wounds to his liver, and the seemingly lack of an eye fixed, his agent stated on the time.

The assault got here 33 years after Iran’s Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or non secular edict, calling on Muslims to assassinate Rushdie over the publication of The Satanic Verses.

Some Muslims noticed passages within the novel in regards to the Prophet Muhammad as blasphemous.

Following Khomeini’s fatwa, Rushdie, born in India to a Muslim Kashmiri household, spent 9 years in hiding beneath British police safety.

Whereas Iran’s pro-reform authorities of President Mohammad Khatami distanced itself from the fatwa within the late Nineties, the multimillion-dollar bounty hanging over Rushdie’s head stored rising and the fatwa was by no means lifted.

Khomeini’s successor, Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was suspended from Twitter in 2019 for saying the fatwa in opposition to Rushdie was “irrevocable”.

Iran has denied involvement within the August assault.

The person accused of stabbing the novelist, 24-year-old Hadi Matar, has pleaded not responsible to second-degree tried homicide and assault prices.

He’s being held with out bail in a western New York jail.

The assault was alongside the strains of what Rushdie and his agent have thought was the “principal hazard … a random particular person popping out of nowhere and attacking,” Wylie instructed El Pais.

“So you possibly can’t defend in opposition to it as a result of it’s completely sudden and illogical,” he stated.