• After being stabbed, Salman Rushdie will likely lose an eye.
• The 75-year-old remains on a ventilator.
• Hadi Matar, 24, from Fairview, New Jersey, has been arrested.

After being stabbed, Salman Rushdie will likely lose an eye and has suffered severed nerves in an arm and liver damage, according to his agent.

After being airlifted to the hospital and undergoing hours of surgery following the attack in New York state, the 75-year-old remains on a ventilator.

“The news is not good. Salman will likely lose one eye, the nerves in his arm were severed, and his liver was stabbed and damaged,” Andrew Wylie stated in a written declaration.

The author, who received death threats after the publication of The Satanic Verses in 1988, was being introduced to the audience prior to delivering a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution when, according to witnesses, a man stormed the stage and stabbed or punched him 10 to 15 times.

As Sir Salman fell to the ground, audience members and staff rushed onto the stage and pinned him down. A state trooper promptly arrested the suspect, who is now in custody.

He has been identified as Hadi Matar, 24, from Fairview, New Jersey, who purchased an event pass. Although police have not yet determined a motive for the assault, they believe the suspect acted alone.

The Satanic Verses was the fourth book by Sir Salman. It was banned in 1988 in a number of Muslim-majority countries, including Iran, because some deemed it to contain blasphemous passages.

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