Novelist Salman Rushdie, 75, has been stabbed in the US, moments before he was supposed to deliver a lecture, reports appearing in global media said.
American wire service, Associated Press reporter said he witnessed a man storming the stage at Chautauqua Institution, 90 km from New York, and attacking the author. After the attack, Rushdie fell to the floor as the cops restrained the attacker. Soon, he was evacuated and flown to a hospital in a medical helicopter.
Rushdie is living off from public life even since Tehran issued a fatwa, or religious decree, calling for his death for his sacrilegious novel, The Satanic Verses in the 1980s. Subsequently, though the Tehran government distanced itself from the fatwa, in 2012, a semi-official Iranian religious foundation raised the bounty for Rushdie from the US $2.8 million to US $3.3 million.
Rushdie rose to prominence with his Booker Prize-winning 1981 novel Midnight’s Children, but his name became known around the world after The Satanic Verses. He later, published a memoir, Joseph Anton, about the ordeal. The title came from the pseudonym Rushdie had used while in hiding.
The Chautauqua Institution, about 55 miles southwest of Buffalo in a rural corner of New York, is known for its summertime lecture series. Rushdie has spoken there before.
A Brtish citizen, Salman’s condition was not immediately known.
