The Eleventh Hour

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From internationally renowned, award-winning author Salman Rushdie, a spellbinding exploration of life, death, and what comes into focus at the proverbial eleventh hour of life “An inventive and engrossing collection of stories which, though death-tinged, are never doom-laden. With luck this master writer has more tales to tell.”—Los Angeles Times A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Rushdie turns his extraordinary imagination to life’s final act with a quintet of stories that span the three countries in which he has made his work—India, England, and America—and feature an unforgettable cast of characters. “In the South” introduces a pair of quarrelsome old men—Junior and Senior—and their private tragedy at a moment of national calamity. In “The Musician of Kahani,” a musical prodigy from the Mumbai neighborhood featured in Midnight’s Children uses her magical gifts to wreak devastation on the wealthy family she marries into. In “Late,” the ghost of a Cambridge don enlists the help of a lonely student to enact revenge upon the tormentor of his lifetime. “Oklahoma” plunges a young writer into a web of deceit and lies as he tries to figure out whether his mentor killed himself or faked his own death. And “The Old Man in the Piazza” is a powerful parable for our times about freedom of speech. Do we accommodate ourselves to death, or rail against it? Do we spend our “eleventh hour” in serenity or in rage? And how do we achieve fulfillment with our lives if we don’t know the end of our own stories? The Eleventh Hour ponders life and death, legacy and identity with the penetrating insight and boundless imagination that have made Salman Rushdie one of the most celebrated writers of our time.
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If old age was thought of as an evening, ending in midnight oblivion, they were well into the eleventh hour. Two quarrelsome old men in Chennai, India, experience private tragedy against the backdrop of national calamity. Revisiting the Bombay neighbourhood of Midnight's Children, a magical musician is unhappily married to a multibillionaire. In an English college, an undead academic can't rest until he avenges his former tormentor. Following Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, Salman Rushdie's new fiction moves between the places he has grown up in, inhabited, explored, and left. In doing so, he asks fundamental questions we all one day face. How does one deal with, accommodate, or rail against entering the eleventh hour, the final stage of your life? How can you bid farewell to the places you have made home? The Eleventh Hour is the magisterial new work from one of our greatest living writers. It speaks deeply to what Salman Rushdie has come from and through, and strikes into the heart of our fractious times.
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Rushdie turns his extraordinary imagination to lifes final act with a quintet of stories that span the three countries in which he has made his workIndia, England, and Americaand feature an unforgettable cast of characters. In the South introduces a pair of quarrelsome old menJunior and Seniorand their private tragedy at a moment of national calamity. In The Musician of Kahani, a musical prodigy from the Mumbai neighborhood featured in Midnights Children uses her magical gifts to wreak devastation on the wealthy family she marries into. In Late, the ghost of a Cambridge don enlists the help of a lonely student to enact revenge upon the tormentor of his lifetime. Oklahoma plunges a young writer into a web of deceit and lies as he tries to figure out whether his mentor killed himself or faked his own death. And The Old Man in the Piazza is a powerful parable for our times about freedom of speech. Do we accommodate ourselves to death, or rail against it? Do we spend our eleventh hour in serenity or in rage? And how do we achieve fulfillment with our lives if we dont know the end of our own stories? The Eleventh Hour probes life and death, legacy and identity, with wit, creativity, and keen insight.[Bokinfo].
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If old age was thought of as an evening, ending in midnight oblivion, they were well into the eleventh hour. ‘Salman Rushdie is a genius’ A.M. Homes Two quarrelsome old men in Chennai, India, experience private tragedy during national calamity. Revisiting the Bombay neighbourhood of Midnight's Children, a magical musician is unhappily married to a multibillionaire. In an English university college, an undead academic asks a lonely student to avenge his former tormentor. These five dazzling works of fiction move between the three countries that Salman Rushdie has called home – India, England and America – and explore what it means to approach the eleventh hour of life. Do we accommodate ourselves to death, or rail against it? How can we bid farewell to the places that we have made home? The Eleventh Hour ponders life and death, legacy and identity with the penetrating insight and boundless imagination that have made Salman Rushdie one of the most celebrated writers of our time. ‘More than 40 years after Midnight's Children, there is still nobody who spins a yarn quite like Salman Rushdie’ Spectator ‘Rushdie has not just enlarged literature’s capacities, he has expanded the world’s imaginative possibilities’ The Times