Writer Salman Rushdie is on a ventilator and is unable to speak due to injuries he sustained when he was assaulted on stage, according to his agent.
“Salman will probably lose an eye, the nerves in his arm are damaged and his liver hit and damaged,” Rushdie’s agent Andrew Wylie said, according to The New York Times.
Rushdie was stabbed while giving a talk in the town of Chautauqua, northwest of New York, on Friday. Moderator Ralph Henry Reese was injured in the face during the attack, but has been released from the hospital.
A suspected perpetrator has been arrested after the attack on Salman Rushdie. He is 24 years old, his name is Hadi Matar and he comes from the state of New Jersey.
The motive behind the knife attack is unknown. According to the AP, whose reporter was in the lecture hall, the perpetrator either punched or stabbed Rushdie 10-20 times. A few hundred people in the audience witnessed the act.
75-year-old Rushdie has lived under constant surveillance since he published the book “The Satanic Verses” in 1988. It partly touched on the life of the Prophet Muhammad.