Salman Rushdie’s agent revealed that the author has lost vision in one eye and one of his hands is incapacitated in the aftermath of the brutal attack two months ago.
In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais, Andrew Wylie, who represents literary greats including Saul Bellow and Roberto Bolano, highlighted the severity of the injuries Rushdie sustained in the “brutal” attack.
Describing the author’s wounds as “profound”, Wylie said, “He had three serious wounds in his neck. One hand is incapacitated because the nerves in his arm were cut. And he has about 15 more wounds in his chest and torso.”
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Wylie didn’t provide information on whether or not the British author was still in the hospital.
Rushdie was stabbed multiple times while he was preparing to deliver a lecture on a stage at the Chautauqua Institution in New York state in August. The acclaimed author received life-threatening injuries and underwent emergency surgery.
What was the controversy?
Because of his infamous novel “The Satanic Verses”, Rushdie spent years hiding under death threats from Iran. The novel was banned in many countries with large Muslim populations.
The book was published in 1988 and a year later, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then supreme leader of Iran, pronounced a fatwa, calling upon Muslims to kill the novelist and anyone involved in its publication for blasphemy. Even a bounty worth millions of dollars was raised to murder the novelist.
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The attacker, Hadi Matar of Fairview, NJ, allegedly rushed to the stage and stabbed the writer in the neck and torso. The 24-year-old later pleaded not guilty to second-degree attempted murder and assault charges.
Matar, who is being held without bail in a western New York jail, had once praised Iran’s Khomeini in an exclusive jailhouse interview with The Post.
But Iran denied any involvement. Its foreign ministry had said that no one has the right to level accusations against the nation. Foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said on Monday that Rushdie himself is to blame after denigrating the world’s Muslims.
Kanani said that “we categorically deny” any link with the attack and “no one has the right to accuse the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
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