By Chris Williamson-
Indian-born novelist, Sir Salman Rushdie, is receiving surgery after being stabbed in the neck while on stage in New York, has received death threats due to his work over a five-decade literary career.
A man has been arrested for the stabbing.
Witnesses told US media he was stabbed multiple times in the neck and torso area, and appeared to fall backwards as he tried to move away from the assailant.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul told a press conference about an hour later that Mr Rushdie was alive.
He was taken to a hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania, by helicopter, where he is undergoing surgery for the atatck.
The interviewer who was also on stage, Henry Reese, suffered a minor head injury. Mr Reese is the co-founder of a non-profit that provides sanctuary to writers exiled under threat of persecution.
The suspect was immediately taken into custody, police said.
Many of the 75-year-old’s books have been hugely successful, with his second novel, Midnight’s Children, winning the Booker Prize in 1981.
His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, published in 1988, which became his most controversial work – bringing about international turmoil unprecedented in its scale.
Death threats were made against Rushdie, who was forced to go into hiding after its publication, and the British government placed the author under police protection.
The Satanic Verses, published in 1988, brought about an international turmoil unprecedented in its scale
Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay two months before Indian independence from Britain.
His first published book, Grimus, did not achieve huge success, but some critics saw him as an author with significant potential.
Rushdie took five years to write his second book, Midnight’s Children, which won the 1981 Booker Prize, was widely acclaimed and sold half a million copies.
Where Midnight’s Children had been about India, Rushdie produced a third novel Shame which was released rele in 1983 – was about a scarcely disguised Pakistan.
The book he wrote five years later posed the biggest danger to his life, The Satanic Verses. Theoutrage is sparked by both moderate and extremist muslims predisposed Rushdie to serious risk. That risk manifested at its highest level in Newyork tonight.
India was the first country to ban it. Pakistan followed suit, as did various other Muslim countries and South Africa.
The novel was praised in many quarters and won the Whitbread Prize for novels, bu tMuslims were outraged by it, and considered it an insult to Islam. They objected – among other things – to two prostitutes in the book being given names of wives of the prophet Mohammed.
The book’s title referred to two verses removed by Mohammed from the Koran, because he believed they were inspired by the devil.
In January 1989, Muslims in Bradford ritually burnt a copy of the book, and newsagents WHSmith stopped displaying it there. Rushdie rejected charges of blasphemy.
In February, people were killed in anti-Rushdie riots in the sub-continent, the British embassy in Tehran was stoned, and a price was put on the author’s head.
Rushdie – by now in hiding with his wife under police guard – expressed his profound regret for the distress he had caused Muslims, but the Ayatollah renewed his call for the author’s death.
The London offices of Viking Penguin, the publishers, were picketed, and death threats were received at the New York office.
Protests against the extreme Muslim reaction were supported by the EEC countries at the time.
The Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses was found murdered at a university north-east of Tokyo in July 1991 in a grim and criminal show of anger in a very sensitive case.
The translator, Hitoshi Igarashi, who worked an assistant professor of comparative culture, was stabbed several times and left in the hallway outside his office at Tsukuba University.
Earlier that same month, the Italian translator, Ettore Capriolo, was stabbed in his apartment in Milan, though he survived the attack.
Rushdie who has two children and been married four times has always been a target of his dangerous enemies, and they have struck without warning.