Salman Rushdie has lost vision in one eye and the use of his hand.
Just over two months after he was brutally attacked onstage while speaking at the Chautauqua Institution, Salman Rushdie’s agent, Andrew Wylie, provided an update on the author’s condition. In an interview with El País, Wylie said, “[His wounds] were profound, but he’s [also] lost the sight of one eye… He had three serious wounds in his neck. One hand is incapacitated because the nerves in his arm were cut. And he has about 15 more wounds in his chest and torso.” He also reiterated that Rushdie is “going to live…That’s the more important thing.”
For safety reasons, Wylie declined to answer whether Rushdie was still in the hospital, telling the paper, “He’s going to live…That’s the more important thing.” In response to a question about whether the stabbing, carried out by 24-year-old Hadi Matar, was a symptom of a harsher climate with regard to free expression, Wylie called the attack “totally unexpected and illogical. It was like John Lennon’s murder.”
Still, Wylie did speak about the rise of nationalism and “a sort of fundamentalist right” in the US. Speaking about the spate of book bans across the country, he said, “You know, that’s the religious right behaving as they behave. It’s ridiculous. It’s ludicrous. It’s shameful. But it’s a big force in the country now.”
