Writer Salman Rushdie remains hospitalized Saturday after suffering serious injuries in a knife attack. The 75-year-old creator suffered liver damage, severed nerves in his arm and eye and was on a ventilator, his agent Andrew Wylie said Friday night. He will probably lose the injured eye.
Police identified the suspect as 24-year-old Hadi Matar. He was arrested after the attack at the Chautauqua Institution, a nonprofit educational and retirement center where Rushdie was scheduled to speak.
Matar, of Fairview, New Jersey, was born in the United States to Lebanese émigré parents from Yaroun, a border town in southern Lebanon.
Rushdie received death threats for his novel satanic verses, published in 1988. Many Muslims considered it blasphemous, seeing the character as an insult to the Prophet Muhammad, among other objections. The book was banned in Iran, where the late leader, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa, or edict, in 1989 calling for Rushdie’s death.
Police said the motive for the attack was unclear. Investigators were working to determine if the assailant acted alone.
Dr Martin Haskell, a doctor who was among those rushing to help, described Rushdie’s injuries as “serious but recoverable”.
Henry Reese, the event’s moderator and co-founder of an organization that offers scholarships to writers facing persecution, was also attacked. He suffered a facial injury and was treated and released from a hospital, police said. He and Rushdie had planned to talk about the United States as a refuge for writers and other artists in exile.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan called the attack “reprehensible” and said the Biden administration wished Rushdie a speedy recovery.
Rushdie has been a spokesman for free speech. The liberal literary world reacted to what Rushdie’s friend and novelist Ian McEwan described as “an assault on freedom of thought and expression.”
