Author Salman Rushdie was stabbed on stage during a conference

The facts happened this Friday at Chautauqua Institute, where the novelist was to give a speech. He was noticed and the assailant was arrested.

British writer Salman Rushdie has lived under police protection since a fatwa issued for his novel in 1988. Satanic VersesHe was the victim of an attack this Friday during an event organized in New York state AP.

According to an Andhra correspondent, a man suddenly appeared on the scene to attack Salman Rushdie with a knife when he arrived. The condition of the writer who is suffering from a neck injury is not known.

The facts took place at Chautauqua Institute in upstate New York, where the novelist was about to give a speech. He was immediately noticed by his assailant He was arrested. The amphitheater where the meeting was to be held was evacuated for security reasons.

A symbol of the struggle against religious oppression

Salman Rushdie, born in Bombay, India in 1947, two months before independence from the British Empire, tries not to fall short of published libel. Satanic VersesThis infuriated the Muslim world and led to a “fatwa” calling for his assassination in 1989.

“My problem is that people continue to perceive me under the single prism of ‘fatwa'”, said this free thinker a few years ago who wanted to be a writer, not an icon.

But current events — the rise to power of radical Islam — have brought it back to what it has always been in the eyes of the West: a symbol of religious obscurantism and the struggle for freedom of expression. Already in 2005, he considered that this “fatwa” was a precursor to the September 11, 2001 attacks.

They live in hiding

Forced to live in hiding and under police protection ever since, he called himself Joseph Anton in homage to his favorite writers, Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov. He had to face great loneliness, exacerbated by a rift with his wife, the American novelist Marianne Wiggins. Satanic Verses are dedicated.

Settled in New York for a few years, Salman Rushdie – arched eyebrows, heavy eyelashes, bald head, glasses and beard – began an almost ordinary life while continuing to defend satire and irreverence in his books.