Salman Rushdie, the acclaimed author who was hospitalized with serious injuries on Friday after being repeatedly stabbed at a public appearance in New York state, is no longer on a ventilator and his condition is improving, his agent said on Friday. Sunday.
“He has been taken off his ventilator so the road to recovery has begun,” his agent, Andrew Wylie, wrote in an email to Reuters. “It will be long; the injuries are serious, but his condition is going in the right direction.”
Rushdie, 75, was preparing to deliver a lecture on artistic freedom at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York when a 24-year-old man lunged onto the stage and stabbed the writer of Indian origin, who has lived with a bounty on his head since his 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses” caused Iran to urge Muslims to kill him.
The suspect, Hadi Matar, of Fairview, New Jersey, pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and assault charges at a court appearance on Saturday, his court-appointed attorney, Nathaniel Barone, told Reuters.
After hours of surgery, Rushdie had been placed on a ventilator and had been unable to speak since Friday night, Wylie said in an earlier update on the novelist’s condition, adding that he was likely to lose an eye and had eye damage. arm nerves and liver injuries.
Wylie did not provide further details about Rushdie’s health in his Sunday email.
The stabbing was condemned by writers and politicians around the world as an attack on free speech. In a statement Saturday, President Joe Biden praised the “universal ideals” of truth, courage and resistance embodied by Rushdie and his work.
“These are the pillars of any free and open society,” he said.
Neither local nor federal authorities offered further details about the investigation. Police said Friday they had not yet established a motive for the attack.
An initial review of Matar’s social media accounts by law enforcement showed he was sympathetic to Shiite extremism and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, though no definitive links had been found, according to NBC News. New York.