Author Salman Rushdie has been injured after being punched and stabbed on stage ahead of a speech he was due to give in Chautauqua, near Buffalo.
The writer, 75, was attacked as he was being introduced to the stage for the CHQ 2022 event before giving a lecture on Friday morning.
He was attending for a discussion of the United States as asylum for writers and other artists in exile and as a home for freedom of creative expression.
Rushdie has previously received death threats for his writing, with his book the Satanic Verses sparking protests in 1988
Witnesses claimed that he managed to walk off stage with assistance and the attacker was restrained.
Blood appeared to be spattered on the wall behind where Rushdie had been attacked, with some also seen on a chair.
His current condition is not known, and a man has been arrested by New York police.
Rushdie’s London-based son Zafar, 42, is aware of the incident and his father has been seen being transported by air ambulance after the attack.
Hundreds of people in the audience gasped at the sight of the attack and were then evacuated.
The author was knighted in 2007 in Britain ‘for services to literature’ by his friend Tony Blair.
Rushdie has previously received death threats for his writing, with his book the Satanic Verses which supposedly insulted the Prophet Mohammed and The Koran.
He wrote the Satanic Verses, which resulted in a culture war being sparked in 1988 in Britain – with protests taking place in the UK along with book burnings.
Pakistan banned the book, and he was issued a fatwa – a death sentence – by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini in February 1989.
People rushed to assist the author after the attack, with the motive currently unknown
Rushdie was attached ahead of his speech in Chautauqua, near Buffalo
Khomeini called for the death of Rushdie and his publishers, and also called for Muslims to point him out to those who could kill him if they could not themselves.
The fatwa, or ‘spiritual opinion’, followed a wave of book burnings in Britain and rioting across the Muslim world which lead to the deaths of 60 people and hundreds being injured.
Rushdie was put under round-the-clock security at the expense of the British taxpayer when a $3million bounty was put on his head.
He was forced to go into hiding for a decade with police protection, and previously reported that he received a ‘sort of Valentines card’ from Iran each year letting him know the country has not forgotten the vow to kill him.
In 2012, a semi-official Iranian religious foundation raised the bounty for Rushdie from $2.8 million to $3.3 million.
After the attack today Rushdie was quickly surrounded by a small group of people who held up his legs, presumably to send more blood to his chest.
Hitoshi Igarashi, who translated The Satanic Verses into Japanese for Rushdie, was stabbed to death on the campus where he taught literature.
Ettore Capriolo, the Italian translator of the book, was knifed in his apartment in Milan.
Blood appeared to be spattered on the wall behind where Rushdie had been attacked, with some also seen on a chair
Medics attended to Rushdie after the attack, with witnesses saying a man ‘punched and stabbed’ the author as he was announced on stage
Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie spent years in hiding after being issued ‘spiritual’ death threat by Iran
Sir Salman Rushdie is a Booker Prize-winning author and novelist.
The 75-year-old was born in India, and his writing is often based around the themes of connections and migrations between Western and Eastern civilizations.
He won the Booker Prize in 1981 for his second novel, Midnight’s Children. His writing has spawned 30 book-length studies, and over 700 articles on his writing.
Rushdie’s writings have broadly been acclaimed to the genres of magical realism and historical fiction.
He has been living in the US since 2000, and he was named a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University in 2015.
He has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, including for Midnight’s Children, in 1983 for Shame, in 1988 for The Satanic Versus, in 1995 for The Moor’s Last Sign, and in 2019 for Quichotte.
Rushdie, 75, is an Indian-born acclaimed author and novelist
The novel’s Norwegian publisher William Nygaard, was shot three times outside his home and left for dead in October 1993, but survived the attack.
In Turkey, the book’s translator, Aziz Nesin, was the target of an arson attack on a hotel that killed 37.
Rushdie previously wrote a 655-page fatwa memoir, which was nominated for the UK’s top non- fiction award, the Samuel Johnson prize.
During the fatwa helived in permanent terror and at one point thought his ex-wife Clarissa Luard and their son Zafar, who was nine at the time, had been killed by assassins or kidnapped.
In 1998 Iran’s reformist president relaxed the fatwa and said it had no intention of tracking Rushdie down and killing him.
Technically it still stands but is unlikely to be enforced.
He has has two children from his four marriages – his other son is called Milan – but has been linked with many other women including Indian model Riya Sen.
Prince Charles also reportedly refused to support the author during his fatwa because he thought the book was offensive to Muslims.
In an article for Vanity Fair magazine, Martin Amis claimed that the Prince’s views caused a row at a dinner party after Rushdie was issued with the death sentence by Islamic clerics in 1989.
Amis claims that Charles told him that he would not offer support ‘if someone insults someone else’s deepest convictions’.
Amis remonstrated with him but all Charles did was ‘take it on board’, even though Rushdie is a British-Indian citizen.
Fellow author Stephen King also refused to let stores in America sell his books if they refused to carry The Satanic Verses.
Rushdie has spoken at the Chautauqua Institution before, which is based about 55 miles southwest of Buffalo in a rural corner of New York.
It is known for its summertime lecture series.