Rushdie, who won the Booker Prize for his novel “Midnight’s Children”, was unable to speak.
Celebrated author and winner of the world's top literary prizes, Salman Rushdie, is currently battling for life as he has been placed on a ventilator.
Rushdie, whose writings generated death threats, was stabbed in the neck at a literary event in upstate New York, United States on Friday.
The assailant stormed the stage soon after his introduction.
SaharaReporters had on Friday reported that the police detained the suspect named as Hadi Matar, 24, from Fairview, New Jersey.
Rushdie, who won the Booker Prize for his novel “Midnight’s Children”, was unable to speak.
His agent, Andrew Wylie, said “Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged.”
The suspect was from Fairview, New Jersey. He had faced Islamist death threats for years after writing "The Satanic Verses.”
The book forced him into hiding after it was banned in Iran and a $3 million bounty was put on his head.
The Iranian government distanced itself from the bounty, according to the AP, but the fatwa has been continued by a semi-official religious organisation, which raised the bounty to $3.3 million.
Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for his work and has been awarded many of the top literary prizes, including two Whitbread Prizes for Best Novel.
He was scheduled to sit on a panel alongside Henry Reese, president of City of Asylum in Pittsburgh, an organisation that provides sanctuary to writers exiled under threat of persecution.