Salman Rushdie is “on the road to recovery,” his agent confirmed Sunday, two days after the author of The Satanic Verses was stabbed at a lecture in New York.
The announcement followed news that the lauded writer was on Saturday removed from a ventilator and able to talk.
Literary agent Andrew Wylie cautioned that although 75-year-old Rushdie’s “condition is headed in the right direction,” his recovery would be long.
Photo: Reuters
Rushdie had a damaged liver and severed nerves in an arm and in an eye that he is likely to lose, Wylie had said previously.
“Though his life changing injuries are severe, his usual feisty & defiant sense of humour remains intact,” Rushdie’s son Zafar Rushdie wrote in a Sunday statement that stressed the author remained in a critical condition.
The family statement also thanked the “audience members who bravely leapt to his defence,” as well as police, doctors and “the outpouring of love and support.”
Hadi Matar, 24, on Saturday pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and assault charges in what a prosecutor called “a targeted, unprovoked, preplanned attack” at western New York’s Chautauqua Institution, a nonprofit education and retreat center.
The attack was met with global shock and outrage, along with praise for the man who, for more than three decades — including nine years in hiding under the protection of the British government — has weathered death threats and a US$3 million bounty on his head over The Satanic Verses.
“It’s an attack against his body, his life and against every value that he stood for,” said Henry Reese, cofounder of Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum, who was on stage with Rushdie and sustained a gash to his forehead and other minor injuries.
They had planned to discuss the need for writers’ safety and freedom of expression.
Authors, activists and government officials cited Rushdie’s bravery and longtime championing of free speech.
Writer and longtime friend Ian McEwan labeled Rushdie “an inspirational defender of persecuted writers and journalists” and actor-author Kal Penn called him a role model, “especially many of us in the South Asian diaspora.”
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