Hanif Kureishi says Sir Salman Rushdie has written to him every day as he continues to recover from a fall which left him unable to move his arms or legs.
The author and playwright, 68, posted a lengthy update on his condition online, in which he said Sir Salman had encouraged him to be patient.
Kureishi – best known for his works The Buddha Of Suburbia, Intimacy and Mother – revealed on Twitter that he was being treated at a hospital in Rome following an incident on December 26. He said he had begun to feel “dizzy” while on a walk in the Italian capital and had fallen forward, waking up minutes later in a pool of blood with his neck “in a grotesquely twisted position”.
Sharing an update on Twitter on Monday, he wrote: “I sat up today,” adding that his motion remained limited, but that his hospital experience was “certainly good for creativity”.
“I can hold up my right hand a little. I can’t close or open my fingers. My hands are inert, stiff and swollen, and they could just as well belong to someone else,” he said. "These experiences are terrible, but I am beginning to see they are not so unusual.”
He continued: “My friend Salman Rushdie, one of the bravest men I know, a man who has stood up to the most evil form of Islamofascism, writes to me every single day, encouraging patience. He should know. He gives me courage.”
Indian-born British novelist Sir Salman was about to deliver a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in New York state on August 12 last year when he was attacked and stabbed numerous times on stage. The 75-year-old, whose novel The Satanic Verses led to death threats from Iran in the 1980s, suffered a damaged liver and severed nerves in an arm and an eye.
His attacker, 25-year-old Hadi Matar, has made multiple appearances at Chautauqua County Court in New York, having pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and assault charges following the incident.
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