Author Salman Rushdie has been permanently wounded by this summer's stabbing attack in western New York.
According to his agent, Rushdie has lost sight in one eye and lost the use of one hand.
"[His wounds] were profound, but he's [also] lost the sight of one eye," Andrew Wylie told Spanish language newspaper El Pais. "He had three serious wounds in his neck. One hand is incapacitated because the nerves in his arm were cut. And he has about 15 more wounds in his chest and torso. So, it was a brutal attack."
The 75-year-old author was stabbed nearly 20 times in the neck, chest and torso during a literary event at the Chautauqua Institution in August.
Rushdie was being introduced at the event when a man stormed the lecture stage and began punching and stabbing him in front of a horrified crowd.
Following the attack, Rushdie was placed on a ventilator. At the time, his agent said he would likely lose one eye, that the nerves in his arm were severed, and his liver was stabbed and damaged.
The alleged attacker, 24-year-old Hadi Matar of New Jersey, was taken into custody at the scene and has been charged with assault and attempted murder.
Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt has called the attack "preplanned."
Speaking to the New York Post from jail, Matar said he decided to see Rushdie at the Chautauqua Institution after he saw a tweet last winter about the writer's planned appearance. He was surprised to learn that Rushdie survived the attack.
"I don't like the person. I don't think he's a very good person," Matar told the newspaper. "He's someone who attacked Islam. He attacked their beliefs, the belief systems."
Matar told the New York Post that he took a bus to Buffalo and then a Lyft to Chautauqua, where he spent the night sleeping in the grass before Rushdie's presentation.
A native of Mumbai, India, Rushdie was the subject of death threats from Iran in the 1980s due to his writing and the late leader Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death. More than $3 million in reward money has been offered for anyone who kills the author.
Iran denied involvement in the attack, and Matar wouldn't say whether he was following Khomeini's fatwa.
Rushdie's book "The Satanic Verses" has been banned in Iran and Pakistan since 1988 and many Muslims consider it to be blasphemous.
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