Salman Rushdie, a British author whose sacrilegious novels have earned him death and rape threats, got stabbed in the neck and body while giving a lecture in New York state on Friday. He was then flown to a hospital, according to authorities.
Rushdie was on a ventilator and unable to talk on Friday night following an attack that was denounced by authors and politicians throughout the world as an attack on the right to free speech.
His literary agent, Andrew Wylie, sent him an email saying, “The news is not good.” The nerves in Salman’s arm were cut, his liver was pierced, and it is possible that he may lose one of his eyes.
At the Chautauqua Institution in western New York, Rushdie, 75, was being presented to speak to a large audience about artistic freedom when a guy rushed onto the stage and lunged at the writer, who has had a price on his head since the late 1980s.
Attendees who were in shock assisted in removing the man from Rushdie, who’d already fallen to the ground. The attacker was detained by a trooper from the New York State Police, who was on duty to provide protection. Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old Fairview, New Jersey, man with a ticket to the event, was named by police as the suspect.
