NEWS: Salman Rushdie has lost sight in one eye, his agent Andrew Wiley said

Writer Salman Rushdie was stabbed in New York in August and lost sight in one eye and fin­gers in one hand, his agent said.

“He has about 15 more scars on his chest,” New York-based agent Andrew Wiley told Span­ish dai­ly El Pais. “It was a bru­tal attack”

Mr Wiley said he could not reveal the nov­el­ist’s where­abouts. Hap­pen­ing at an event in New York State.

Rushdie has been tar­get­ed for years over his 1988 nov­el, Satan­ic Verse.

Some Mus­lims con­sid­er the book to be blas­phe­my. The man accused of the attack, 24-year-old Hadi Matar, has plead­ed not guilty to attempt­ed murder.

“He lost the sight in one of his eyes,” Wiley said in an inter­view with El Pais news­pa­per. “There were three seri­ous injuries to his neck. A nerve in his arm had been sev­ered, leav­ing him with one hand.”

“I can’t say any­thing about his where­abouts,” Wiley said when asked if the author was still in the hos­pi­tal. For him to live…that’s the most impor­tant thing.

On August 12th, an attack took place at the Chateauqua Insti­tute in New York. Mr. Rushdie was about to give a speech about how Amer­i­ca has served as a haven for writers.

A nov­el­ist who was forced to go into hid­ing for near­ly 10 years after the pub­li­ca­tion of The Dev­il’s Poet­ry. Many Mus­lims were furi­ous with him for por­tray­ing the Prophet Muham­mad as an insult to their faith.

Rushdie was threat­ened, and then-Iran­ian leader Aya­tol­lah Khome­i­ni issued a fat­wa (order) call­ing for Rushdie’s assas­si­na­tion and put a $3 mil­lion boun­ty on his head.

The fat­wa is still in force, and Iran’s semi-offi­cial reli­gious foun­da­tion added a $500,000 reward in 2012, even though the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment has dis­tanced itself from Khome­ini’s orders.

Wiley told El Pais that he has spo­ken to Rushdie about these threats over the years. “Many years after the Fat­wa was issued, the great­est dan­ger he faced was ran­dom killings that came out of nowhere.

“I can’t guard against it because it’s com­plete­ly unex­pect­ed and illog­i­cal. It was like the assas­si­na­tion of John Lennon.”

Rushdie was born in India in 1947. He attend­ed board­ing school in Eng­land and went on to study at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge. In 2007, he was knight­ed for his con­tri­bu­tions to literature.

The attack has been wide­ly con­demned as an attack on free­dom of expression.