Author Salman Rushdie, who has a US$3 million (A$4.6 million) bounty on his head, has been repeatedly stabbed on stage at a writers’ conference in New York.
According to witnesses, the 75-year-old man was about to give a speech at the CHQ 2022 event in Chautauqua, Buffalo, when he was attacked on stage.
An Associated Press reporter witnessed a man storm the stage at the Chautauqua institution and begin punching or stabbing Rushdie as he was being introduced, the outlet reported.
The perpetrator was grabbed or fell to the ground, and the man was restrained. Rushdie’s condition was not immediately known.
“Just witnessed the horrific assassination attempt on #SalmanRushdie’s life. He was stabbed multiple times before the attacker was subdued by security,” author Carl Levan tweeted shortly after the stabbing. “Some intrepid audience members took to the stage. What courage will be expected of us to defend even the smallest freedoms?
The Indian-born novelist has previously received death threats for his writing, particularly for his 1988 book The Satanic Verses.
Pakistan banned the book after the uproar, and Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 issued a fatwa – a death sentence – on it.
Khomeini’s threat forced Rushdie into hiding for the better part of a decade, and the writer claimed that he received a “Valentine’s card” from Iran every year reminding him that they wanted him dead.
Rushdie won the Booker Prize in 1981 for his second novel, Midnight’s Children.
He has lived in the United States since 2000 and in 2015 was named Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University.
He has been a finalist for the Booker Prize five times, for Midnight’s Children, in 1983 for Shame, in 1988 for The Satanic Verses, in 1995 for The Moor’s Last Sign and in 2019 for Quichotte.
More to come