Author Salman Rushdie, who was stabbed roughly 10 times Friday as he prepared to give a lecture in New York, has been taken off a ventilator and is able to talk.

Rushdie has faced regular death threats since the publication of his 1988 book “The Satanic Verses,” which some Muslims found to be sacrilegious. The late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini described the book as an insult to Islam and issued a religious decree calling for Rushdie’s death.

Rushdie, 75, remains hospitalized with serious injuries. However, the “road to recovery has begun,” Rushdie’s agent Andrew Wylie wrote in a text to the New York Times. “It will be long; the injuries are severe, but his condition is headed in the right direction.”