“I am upset”, reacts the former Minister of Culture Jack Lang

Jack Lang was Minister of Culture during the publication in French of the satanic verses by Salman Rushdie. The British writer was stabbed in the neck by an individual while he was doing a public reading on Friday August 12 in New York State (United States). He is alive and was taken to hospital. “I am upset”reacted Jack Lang in the 23h of franceinfo. “He’s been a friend for a long time already, he’s a huge writer”he continues.

“I absolutely did not expect him to experience such a situation again. It is not known who is the perpetrator of this crime. The ‘fatwa’ that was launched against him seemed to have fallen into oblivion “added the former Minister of Culture, who remembers having received the writer in France in 1992. “At the time, there were people who were quite fearful and who feared that the presence of Salman Rushdie in Paris would arouse the resentment and anger of Iranian Islamists”recalls Jack Lang.