Sir Salman Rushdie is on a ventilator in hospital and could lose an eye after being stabbed in a New York state theater yesterday, his agent said.
The British author was about to give a talk about the United States as a haven for persecuted writers when an attacker took the stage.
Rushdie, 75, spent nearly a decade in hiding after Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, calling for his death in 1989 in response to his novel. The Satanic Verseswhich many Muslims considered blasphemous.
Rushdie had led a relatively normal life in recent years
GRANT POLLARD/INVISION/AP
Witnesses in the theater saw a masked man dressed in black punch Rushdie ten or fifteen times and saw him fall to the ground, covered in blood. A doctor at