Writer Salman Rushdie has made a public appearance nine months after being attacked and injured onstage.

He issued a dire warning that the West is currently facing the worst threat to free speech ever.

Upon receiving the Freedom to Publish award on Monday night at the British Book Awards, Rushdie sent a video greeting to the audience.

In his words, “freedom of expression and freedom to publish has never been so threatened in the countries of the West in my lifetime.”

Rushdie was stabbed at a literary event in New York state in August, and the attack left him blind in one eye.

Rushdie spent years in hiding following Iran’s leader calling for his death in 1989 over the alleged blasphemy of the novel “The Satanic Verses.’