Rushdie’s agent, Andrew Wylie, sent an update on his condition shortly before 7 p.m. on Friday, saying Mr. Rushdie was on a ventilator and could not speak. “The news is not good,” he said. “Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged.”
On Friday morning, any sense that threats to his life were a thing of the past was dispelled when an attacker rushed the stage of Chautauqua Institution in Western New York, where Slaman Rushdie was scheduled to give a talk about the United States as a safe haven for exiled writers. The assailant stabbed Rushdie, 75, in the abdomen and the neck, the police and witnesses said, straining to continue the attack even as several people held him back.
Ralph Henry Reese, who was onstage with Rushdie to moderate the discussion and received an injury to his face during the attack, was released from a hospital on Friday afternoon. In an emailed statement, he called Rushdie “one of the great defenders of freedom of speech and freedom of creative expression,” then added: “The fact that this attack could occur in the United States is indicative of the threats to writers from many governments and from many individuals and organizations.”
