Author Salman Rushdie has taken the stand in a New York courtroom to testify against the man charged with stabbing him in a frenzied knife attack.

The novelist Salman Rushdie showed a jury his blinded right eye on Tuesday as he testified against the man charged with trying to murder him at a talk at a rural New York venue in 2022.

During cross-examination, the defense questioned whether Reese was certain he had been stabbed or if he could have been punched instead. Reese admitted he was unsure.

Hadi Matar is charged with attempted murder in the attack, which took place in 2022 as Mr. Rushdie was about to speak at an arts conference in western New York.

Matar was apprehended on Aug. 12, 2022, after authorities say he rushed the stage of the Chautauqua Institution's amphitheater and repeatedly stabbed Rushdie, 77, and injured Henry Reese, 75, who was on stage with the author.

A man injured alongside author Salman Rushdie in a knife attack on a New York lecture stage told jurors that he tried to stop the assault once he realized it wasn't a prank and was left with a gash above his eye.

It occurred to me quite clearly that I was dying,” Rushdie said on Tuesday. “That was my predominant thought.”

On the witness stand, Salman Rushdie described the frenzied moments when a masked man rushed at him on a stage and repeatedly slashed him with a knife.

Salman Rushdie spoke calmly and with occasional dry humor as he testified on Tuesday against the man accused of trying to murder him, the first time the two have been in the same place since the 2022 knife attack on the novelist onstage at a New York arts institute.