Salman Rushdie is said to be threatens to lose an eye and suffer nerve and liver damage after being attacked onstage.
The internationally recognized author, 75, was stabbed several times in New York, where he was to give a speech.
New York State Police have named the suspected attacker as Hadi Matar, 24, of Fairview, New Jersey, who was taken into custody after the incident.
In 1989, Sir Salman’s book The Satanic Verses was banned in Iran, prompting then-leader Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa calling for his death, forcing Sir Salman to go into hiding.
The Iranian government withdrew its support for the death penalty in 1988, but the fatwa for his death had still not been issued.
But who exactly is Salman Rushdie, what books has he written and what is a fatwa?
Who is Salman Rushdie?
Sir Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British-American novelist, born in 1947 in what was once Bombay in British India – now Mumbai in India.
He went to school in England and later went to King’s College in Cambridge, where he studied history.
Sir Salman began his writing career in the early 1970s with two failed books for Midnight’s Children, about the birth of India, which won the Booker Prize in 1981.
The author lived in hiding for years in London under a British government protection program after Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for his death over The Satanic Verses.
Finally, in 1998, the Iranian government withdrew its support for the death penalty and Sir Salman gradually returned to public life.
He was knighted in 2008 and earlier this year he was made a member of the Order of Companions of Honor as part of the Queen’s Birthday.
Sir Salman was previously president of PEN America, which celebrates freedom of speech and expression.
Sir Salman has been married four times, to Clarissa Luard, Marianna Wiggins, Elizabeth West and Padma Lakshmi, and divorced his last wife in 2007.
He has two grown children, Zafar and Milan.
What books did Salman Rushdie write?
Sir Salman started his writing career in 1975 with sci-fi story Grimus, but it didn’t get much recognition.
His next novel, Midnight’s Children, describes India’s escape from British colonial rule and the devastating division that saw the establishment of Pakistan; it won the Booker Prize in 1981.
It subsequently brought him worldwide fame and was named ‘best of the Bookers’ on the 25th anniversary of the literary award.
He then wrote Shame, which came in close to second for the Booker Prize and focused on Pakistan’s political unrest; non-fiction The Jaguar Smile about Nicaragua; and Haroun and the Sea of Stories about the dangers of storytelling.
In 1988, Sir Salman wrote The Satanic Verses, inspired by the life of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, which was popular in the West but caused outrage in some Muslim countries, accusing it of blasphemy and mocking their faith.
It led to Iran’s then Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini calling for his death, resulting in multiple assassination attempts; his translator Hitoshi Igarashi was murdered in 1991.
Other works by Sir Salman include The Moor’s Last Sigh and Shalimar The Clown, which was long-listed for the Booker Prize.
In 2012, he published a memoir describing what happened after the publication of The Satanic Verses and the fatwa on his head.
What is a fatwa?
A fatwa is a legal ruling in Sharia Islamic law from an Islamic religious leader.
The decree is not always a call for violence or a death sentence.
A fatwa issued in 2005 by American and Canadian Muslim scholars and religious leaders stated “all acts of terrorism are… prohibited.”
In Sir Salman’s case, however, the fatwa was a death sentence, issued by then-Iranian leader Atoyallah Ruhollah Khomeini.
He declared The Satanic Verses to be blasphemy and issued a fatwa for his death.
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LAKE : Salman Rushdie ‘on a ventilator and may lose an eye’ after New York attack
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