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.

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

The Satanic Verses author was left blind in one eye after a 24-year-old man allegedly stormed the stage and attacked him at a literary festival in New York

The author recounted in vivid testimony the moment when an attacker stabbed him about 15 times as he was about to give a lecture in western New York.

Jurors heard how a knife attack on novelist Salman Rushdie unfolded in a matter of seconds at a 2022 New York talk and how close he came to death, in the prosecutor's opening statement on Monday at the trial of the man accused of trying to murder the author.

In his own words, author Salman Rushdie describes the moments when a stranger rushed at him on stage in western New York and began attacking him

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.

It was the first time that the author had come face-to-face with the suspect since the 2022 stabbing, which left him blind in one eye.