The writer Salman Rushdiewho was assaulted last night during a conference on stage at the Chautauqua Institutionin the state of New Yorkis hospitalized in a Pennsylvania hospital.
Rushdie, 75, underwent emergency surgery for several hours following knife wounds inflicted on his abdomen, neck and liver by Hadi Matar, 24, who was arrested immediately after the attack. Rusdhie is on a ventilator and is unable to speak due to his serious condition.
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Visit to Arequipa
in 2018Mario Vargas Llosa and Salman Rushdie shared with the Arequipa public details about their literary tastes in an evening to remember at the Municipal Theater of the White City for the there festival. For example, Rushdie recounted that he read DH Lawrence, author of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, in the library of his boys’ boarding school. He added that literature helped him get through that stage of his life.
Vargas Llosa indicated that his first love was a circus artist he saw in Cochabamba when he was 8 years old. Reviewing the books that his mother forbade him, he found one by Neruda that he read secretly. He mentioned that years later, being a university student, he discovered in the library of the National Club where he worked on a collection of erotic books in French.
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Another important part of their conversation was their predictions about which contemporary authors will be read in the next generations. Vargas Llosa did not hesitate to mention Jorge Luis Borges, whose work he described as very unique. He thought that it has been so particular that its emulators have not been able to do interesting works.
For his part, Rushdie gave three names of North American authors that are key to him: Philip Roth, Saul Bellow and Toni Morrison. The latter is a Nobel Prize winner and is the only one alive of those mentioned.
