Salman Rushdie lost sight in one eye, one hand incapacitated after attack
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New York: Salman Rushdie, author of several novels including ' The Satanic Verses' lost sight in one eye and use of a hand following an attack in New York in August.
His agent Andrew Wylie described the author had three serious wounds in the neck alongside 15 more wounds in chest and torso and a hand was incapacitated after the nerves were cut, Reuters reported.
In an interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais Andrew Wylie who represents authors such as Saul Bellow and Roberto Bolano termed the author's wounds as "profound".
The agent has not disclosed if the author is still in hospital more than two months after he was attacked by a 24-year-old New Jersey man just before Rushdie was to give a lecture at Chautauqua Institution in New York.
Rushdie was attacked 33 years after Iran's supreme leader at the time Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a religious edict calling upon Muslims to kill Rushdie for authoring the novel "The Satanic Verses".
After the Muslim world erupted in rage calling the novel blasphemous, Rushdie had to go into hiding taking a pseudonym of Joseph Anton which subsequently became the tile of his memoir of the difficult period.
Rushdie, who was born in India to a Muslim Kashmiri family, however emerged from the cover of British police to write more notable novels.
He fearlessly started appearing at public events, giving lectures and TV interviews continuing to stand for freedom of speech.
However the multimillion-dollar bounty on his head was never lifted despite Iran's pro-reform government of President Mohammad Khatami distanced itself from the fatwa in the late 1990s, according to the report.
The man accused of attacking the novelist is being held without bail in a western New York jail.