Salman Rushdie from fan and talking after stabbing in US

Salman Rushdie has been taken off his ventilator and talks as he recovers from a stabbing in the US.

Ritish American writer Aatish Taseer said in a since-deleted tweet that the 75-year-old was “on a ventilator and talking (and joking)”, which was subsequently confirmed by the author’s agent, Andrew Wylie.

Mr Wylie had previously said that Mr Rushdie was using the ventilator and could lose an eye after sustaining injuries to his arm and liver in the attack.

The Indian-born Briton, whose novel The Satanic Verses sparked death threats from Iran in the 1980s, was about to lecture at the Chautauqua Institute, 65 miles from Buffalo, New York, when he was attacked.

The man charged with stabbing him pleaded not guilty on Saturday to charges of attempted murder and assault, in what a prosecutor called a “pre-planned” crime.

A lawyer for Hadi Matar, 24, argued on his behalf at a formal hearing in a western New York court.

A judge ordered him to be held without bail after prosecutor Jason Schmidt told her Matar was taking steps to deliberately put himself in a position to harm Mr. Rusdhie by getting a ticket to the author’s event. was speaking and arrived the day before with a false identity card.

“This was a targeted, unprovoked, pre-planned attack on Mr Rushdie,” said Mr Schmidt.

Public defender Nathaniel Barone said the authorities had taken too long to get Matar to appear in court as they had him “wired up to a bench in the state police barracks”.

“He has that constitutional right of presumed innocence,” Barone added.

The author was stabbed at least once in the neck and once in the abdomen, police said before being taken to hospital.

Mr Rushdie’s publisher Penguin Random House said he was “deeply shocked and appalled” by the incident.