Salman Rushdie lost partial vision, use of hand after attack, rep says - The Washington Post

“So, it was a brutal attack,” Wylie said successful the interview, adding that the injuries were “profound.”

Wylie declined to accidental whether Rushdie remains successful the hospital, explaining that helium could not springiness immoderate accusation astir the author’s whereabouts.

“He’s going to live,” Wylie told the paper, adding, “That’s the much important thing.”

Wylie’s bureau did not instantly respond to a petition for remark from The Washington Post connected Sunday.

Around 11 a.m. connected Aug. 12, Rushdie had conscionable taken his spot onstage for an interrogation astatine the Chautauqua Institution erstwhile a antheral ran onto the signifier and attacked Rushdie and his interviewer, Henry Reese, who suffered a facial wounded that required a abbreviated hospitalization. Rushdie, who constabulary said had been stabbed successful the cervix and abdomen, was airlifted to a infirmary and enactment connected a ventilator.

In the pursuing days, aft Rushdie had been taken disconnected the ventilator, Wylie told The Post that Rushdie’s injuries were severe. He told the Associated Press that Rushdie suffered harm to his liver and to nerves successful 1 arm, adding that the writer mightiness suffer an eye.

After the 1988 work of Rushdie’s 4th novel, “The Satanic Verses,” Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini denounced the novel’s attraction of Islam arsenic blasphemous and issued a fatwa, oregon spiritual decree, calling for Rushdie’s assassination. A $1 cardinal bounty was enactment connected his caput — an magnitude that would turn to more than $3 million implicit the years.

Rushdie went into hiding for years. Bookstores that sold the caller were attacked. Two translators of the publication — 1 Italian and 1 Japanese — were the victims of abstracted stabbings successful 1991. The Japanese translator, Hitoshi Igarashi, died. Even aft Khomeini died and Iran’s leaders aboriginal distanced themselves from the fatwa, it remained a menace to Rushdie. He told The Post successful 1992 that he wasn’t definite he’d ever beryllium safe, though successful caller years Rushdie made nationalist appearances without disposable guards.

Iran denied engagement successful the August attack. In an interview with the New York Post, Matar would not accidental whether helium was inspired by the fatwa, but helium praised Khomeini and told the insubstantial that helium was amazed Rushdie survived.

In the interrogation published Saturday, Wylie told El País that, successful the past, helium and Rushdie had spoken astir however the fatwa continued to airs a danger, particularly from “a random idiosyncratic coming retired of obscurity and attacking” him.

“So, you can’t support against that,” Wylie told the paper, “because it’s wholly unexpected and illogical.”