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Salman Rushdie lost sight in eye, use of hand in attack
The 75-year-old writer, who had received several death threats after the publication of his "The Satanic Verses", was stabbed several times in the neck and abdomen before he was due to give a talk in the state of New York.
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In this file photo taken on November 16, 2012, British author Salman Rushdie takes part in the TV show (AFP/Kenzo Tribouillard)
A
uthor Salman Rushdie lost vision in one eye and was left "incapacitated" in a hand after he was stabbed in the United States in August, his agent said in an interview published this weekend.
The 75-year-old writer, who had received several death threats after the publication of his "The Satanic Verses", was stabbed several times in the neck and abdomen before he was due to give a talk in the state of New York.
Rushdie was then air-lifted to a nearby hospital for emergency surgery but his condition had improved in the weeks after.
"He's lost the sight of one eye... He had three serious wounds in his neck. One hand is incapacitated because the nerves in his arm were cut. And he has about 15 more wounds in his chest and torso," Andrew Wylie told Spanish daily El Pais, providing an update on Rushdie's health.
The injuries "were profound... it was a brutal attack", Wylie added.
He would not give any information about the writer's whereabouts, or whether he was still in hospital, but said: "He's going to live."
The agent declined to say whether "The Satanic Verses" author was still in hospital more than two months after police said a 24-year-old New Jersey man stabbed the writer in the neck and torso just before Rushdie was to give a lecture at Chautauqua Institution, a retreat about 12 miles (19 km) from Lake Erie.
The novelist was rushed to the hospital after sustaining severe injuries in the attack, including nerve damage in his arm, wounds to his liver, and the likely loss of an eye, Wylie said at the time.
The attack came 33 years after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran's supreme leader, issued a fatwa, or religious edict, calling on Muslims to assassinate Rushdie a few months after "The Satanic Verses" was published. Some Muslims saw passages in the novel about the Prophet Muhammad as blasphemous.
Rushdie, who was born in India to a Muslim Kashmiri family, has lived with a bounty on his head, and spent nine years in hiding under British police protection.
While Iran's pro-reform government of President Mohammad Khatami distanced itself from the fatwa in the late 1990s, the multimillion-dollar bounty hanging over Rushdie's head kept growing and the fatwa was never lifted.
The British author had lived in hiding for years after Iran's first supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordered his killing for what he deemed the blasphemous nature of "The Satanic Verses".
The main suspect, Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old from New Jersey with roots in Lebanon, was arrested immediately after the attack on Rushdie and he then pleaded not guilty during a hearing in New York state in mid-August.
The attack sparked outrage in the West but was praised by extremists in Muslim countries like Iran and Pakistan.
