Salman Rushdie on ‘long road to recovery’, says his agent

Noted Indian-born novelist Salman Rushdie, who suffered grievous injuries after being stabbed repeatedly in New York last week, is out of ventilator and his “road to recovery has begun” but “will be long”, his agent said on Monday.

“He's off the ventilator, so the road to recovery has begun…It will be long; the injuries are severe, but his condition is headed in the right direction,” his agent, Andrew Wylie, told Reuters in an email.

His son Zafar in a separate statement said that Rushdie remains in critical condition, but he has been removed from a ventilator, which “allowed him to talk and demonstrate that his usual feisty and defiant sense of humour remains intact”.

On Friday, when Rushdie stepped onto the podium to give a lecture literary festival in upstate New York, he was attacked with a knife. The accused was later identified as Hadi Matar, 24, from New Jersey.

A bounty worth millions of dollars was placed by the Islamic extremists on Rushdie who found his book ‘Satanic Verses’ to be blasphemous. That bounty was placed after a fatwa was issued 33 years ago by then Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. His successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in 2019 said that the decree remained "irrevocable."

Matar later on Saturday pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder and assault at a brief court appearance where he was denied bail.

Rushdie lived in hiding and under police protection for years following the fatwa in 1989.

The 75-year-old was at the Chautauqua Institution, New York, to speak about the importance of America’s giving asylum to exiled writers when he was attacked.

He recently said that he believed his life was “very normal again”.

(With inputs from agencies)

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