Jurors have watched videos showing Salman Rushdie being repeatedly stabbed on a stage in western New York while audience members gasped in horror at the attack that left the prized-winning novelist seriously wounded and blinded in one eye.

Salman Rushdie was so stunned when a masked man started to stab him on a stage in western New York that the author didn’t even try to fight back, a prosecutor said Monday during opening statements in the suspect’s attempted murder trial.

The 77-year-old author was blinded in one eye in the attack and spent months recovering, a process he detailed in a memoir released last year.