Author Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses” topped several Amazon bestsellers lists on Tuesday, days after he sustained serious injuries in a stabbing at a lecture in New York.
His agent Andrew Wylie said the author could lose an eye after the attack, which also damaged his liver and severed nerves in one arm. Since then, the award-winning novelist was taken off a ventilator on Saturday and was able to talk again, according to Wylie.
Rushdie has dealt with more than 30 years of death threats and a $3 million bounty on his head over “The Satanic Verses.” Former supreme leader of Iran Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death following the 1988 publication of “The Satanic Verses,” which some readers found blasphemous for its depiction of Islam.
“The Satanic Verses” over the span of the weekend after Rushdie’s stabbing skyrocketed to the top of several Amazon’s bestselling books lists on Monday and Tuesday.
The book came in as the #1 Best Seller in Amazon’s Literary Satire Fiction list and in the Contemporary British & Irish Literature list. The Spanish version of the novel also topped the Best Sellers in Literature & Fiction in Spanish page. These are in contrast to last Friday when Rushdie’s books did not even make the top 100, according to archives of Salman Rushdie’s Amazon page recovered by the non-profit Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
The title also claimed 27th place in the overall Amazon Best Sellers list on Tuesday, where it also had not made the top 100 last week, as seen in Wayback Machine’s archive of Amazon’s Best Seller page.
His other books, including “Midnight’s Children” and “Joseph Anton: A Memoir” had similarly topped the Best Sellers list for the Asia Myth & Legend and Religious Intolerance section respectively, where the former had previously not broken top 50 last month.
Police have not confirmed the motive of the individual arrested following the attack on Rushdie.
Amazon was unable to provide proprietary sales data when asked if sales of Rushdie’s books were more robust after Friday’s incident. Amazon has also directed CNBC to Rushdie’s publisher, Random House, who were also unavailable for comment.