Salman Rushdie is in emergency medical care and may lose one of his eyes, after the Satanic Verses author was stabbed onstage during an event in New York on Friday.
“The news is not good,” his agent, Andrew Wylie, told reporters. “Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged.”
New York State Police have named a 24-year-old man as the suspect in the stabbing.
Hadi Matar, 24, of New Jersey, was taken into custody on Friday morning after allegedly storming the stage and stabbing the author at least once in the neck and abdomen at the Chautauqua Institution, Major Eugene J. Staniszewski told a press conference on Friday afternoon. Mr Matar was taken into custody by a state trooper and sheriff’s deputy assigned to the event.
Mr Rushdie was treated by a doctor on the stage before being airlifted to an area hospital by helicopter.
Henry Reese, the co-founder of the City of Asylum organisation who was sitting next to Mr Rushdie, suffered a minor head injury, police said.
Mr Rushdie has long been the target of death threats over the publication of his 1988 book The Satanic Verses.
