Salman Rushdie off ventilator, talking following stabbing attack

MOSCOW: Novelist Salman Rushdie, who was stabbed at a literary festival in New York, is now off the ventilator and is able to talk, according to fellow author Aatish Ali Taseer.

"Just had the most thrilling news: 'Salman is off the ventilator and talking (and joking)...,'" Taseer, a British-American writer and journalist, said on social media on Saturday night, reported Sputnik.

On Friday, Rushdie, 75, was about to deliver a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York, when he was suddenly stabbed twice by 24-year-old Hadi Matar, of New Jersey. Rushdie's literary agent Andrew Wylie told media outlets that the author was hospitalised and on a ventilator, unable to speak. Wylie said Rushdie was likely to lose one eye and also suffered damage to his liver and the nerves in one of his arms were severed. The acclaimed novelist has already undergone surgery.

Matar has been arrested and charged with one count of attempted second-degree murder and one count of second-degree assault (on a man who moderated the Friday literary event). An attorney for Matar entered a not guilty plea on his behalf at a court hearing on Saturday. Matar could face up to 25 years in prison.

Rushdie is a celebrated Indian-born British author and winner of numerous literary prizes. In 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran at that time, issued an edict calling for the killing of Rushdie, whose book "The Satanic Verses" is viewed as blasphemous by many Muslims.

-- BERNAMA