NEW YORK (AP) — Salmon Rushdie’s agent says the writer has misplaced sight in a single eye and using a hand as he recovers from an assault from a person who rushed the stage at an August literary occasion in western New York, in response to a printed report.
Literary agent Andrew Wylie advised the Spanish language newspaper El Pais in an article revealed Saturday that Rushdie suffered three critical wounds to his neck and 15 extra wounds to his chest and torso within the assault that took away sight in a watch and left a hand incapacitated.
Rushdie, 75, spent years in hiding after Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a 1989 edict, a fatwa, calling for his loss of life after publication of his novel “The Satanic Verses,” which some Muslims contemplate blasphemous. Over the previous 20 years, Rushdie has traveled freely.
Hadi Matar, 24, of Fairview, New Jersey, has been incarcerated after pleading not responsible to tried homicide and assault within the Aug. 12 assault on Rushdie as he was being launched on the Chautauqua Establishment, a rurally situated middle 55 miles (89 kilometers) southwest of Buffalo that’s identified for its summertime lecture collection.
After the assault, Rushdie was handled at a Pennsylvania hospital, the place he was briefly placed on a ventilator to recuperate from what Wylie advised El Pais was a “brutal assault” that minimize nerves to 1 arm.
Wylie advised 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 vital factor,” Wylie mentioned.
The assault was alongside the strains of what Rushie and his agent have thought was the “principal hazard … a random individual popping out of nowhere and attacking,” Wylie advised El Pais.
“So you possibly can’t defend towards it as a result of it’s completely sudden and illogical,” he mentioned.
Wylie advised the newspaper it was like Beatles member John Lennon’s homicide. Lennon was shot to loss of life by Mark David Chapman outdoors his Manhattan condo constructing Dec. 8, 1980, hours after the singer had signed an autograph for Chapman.
In a jailhouse interview with The New York Submit, Matar mentioned he disliked Rushdie and praised Khomeini. Iran has denied involvement within the assault.