The novelist Salman Rushdie, stabbed in the neck This Friday while participating in an act in New York, he is in critical condition and survives with assisted breathing. Since the 1980s, the writer has received death threats after writing the satanic versesa novel that provoked protests in the Muslim world.
“The news is not good. Salman will probably lose an eye, nerves have been severed in one arm and his liver was stabbed and damaged,” he told The New York Times, Andrew Wylieyour book agent.
The State Police New York reported that the writer was taken by helicopter to Eire Hospital in Pennsylvania, where “he was still in the operating room” six hours after the attack, which gives an idea of the seriousness of his condition.
assailant was arrested
The aggressor, who was arrested, is a 24-year-old man with a Muslim name, Hadi Matar, and a resident of New Jersey. At the moment, he has not yet revealed the motives for his attack, which occurred when Salman Rushdie I was participating in a conference on refuge cities.
According to BBC, the suspect jumped onto the stage and stabbed Rushdie in the neck and abdomen. Police also reported that the host of the event, Henry Reese, also suffered the consequences of the attack, although he only ended up with minor injuries.
“The Satanic Verses”
Since 1989 it hung over Salman Rushdie a death sentence, when Ayatollah Khomeini, at the time Supreme Leader of Iran, issued a fatwa condemning the publication of his book the satanic verses, considered blasphemous for his criticism of Islam. It was also asked to end the novelist’s life in exchange for US$3 million.
Death threats multiplied and Rushdie had to live in hiding for more than ten years, even the British government put the author under police protection. The novel caused the United Kingdom and Iran to break diplomatic relations, and Western authors and intellectuals from various countries denounced the threat to freedom of expression.
Salman Rushdie belongs to a family of Muslim tradition, but did not practice that religion. “I never considered myself a religiously concerned writer, until a religion began to persecute me,” he wrote in an article. Despite the controversy, the satanic verses it was praised in many quarters and won the Whitbread Prize, but backlash against the book continued to mount.
my favorite novel
The odyssey
“The Odyssey” closes the podcast “My favorite novel”. It is a Greek epic poem attributed to Homer, a character who belongs more to myth than to history. Despite this, his figure has survived 4 thousand years as the author of The Iliad and The Odyssey, the two epic poems that begin universal literature. The last one, also known as Ulysses (Odysseus), takes place in the times of the gods and narrates the deed of our protagonist on his return to Ithaca and all the tests that he has to overcome. With Ricardo Velásquez, Samuel Dávalos and Katiuska Valencia. Adapted by Mariana Gonzales Gavilano and directed by Alonso Alegría.