British-American writer Aatish Taseer said, in a since-deleted tweet, that the 75-year-old was "off the ventilator and talking (and joking)", which was then confirmed by the author s agent Andrew Wylie.
Because of his 1988 work "The Satanic Verses", a fatwa was issued against Rushdie by then-Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini calling for the author s death.