The Académie Goncourt, which awards the most prestigious French-language literary prize each year, expressed on Sunday "
its unconditional support and solidarity
" to the writer Salman Rushdie, hospitalized in serious condition after being stabbed in the United States on Friday.
"
Becoming in spite of himself an unshakable symbol of resistance in the face of Islamist totalitarianism and obscurantism, he always liked to point out that this violence against him originated in a work of fiction and that it paradoxically had the effect of confirm the power of literature
,” writes the Académie Goncourt in a press release.
Threatened with death since a "fatwa" from Iran in 1989, a year after the publication of his book "
The Satanic Verses
", the British naturalized American writer was stabbed a dozen times on Friday in New York State (northeastern United States).
Read alsoAn Iranian newspaper believes that the attack on Salman Rushdie is “probably” an American plot
Since
Iran's "
call for murder " against Salman Rushdie in 1989, "
publishers and translators of his book have been attacked, killed, injured all over the world for not being able to reach the author
" , recalls the Goncourt Academy.