The eleventh hour

by Salman Rushdie

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 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. They are the reckoning with mortality that we all must one day make, and speak deeply to what the author has come from and through.

Do we accommodate ourselves to death, or rail against it? How can we bid farewell to the places that we have made home? How do we achieve fulfilment 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.

Brought to you by Penguin.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, India, Fantasy, Literary Fiction, Magical Realism, Literature

240 pages, Paperback

First published November 4, 2025

About the author

Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British and American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, typically set on the Indian subcontinent. Rushdie's second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was deemed to be "the best novel of all winners" on two occasions, marking the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize.
After his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), Rushdie became the subject of several assassination attempts and death threats, including a fatwa calling for his death issued by Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran. In total, 20 countries banned the book. Numerous killings and bombings have been carried out by extremists who cite the book as motivation, sparking a debate about censorship and religiously motivated violence. In 2022, Rushdie survived a stabbing at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York.
In 1983, Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was appointed a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in 1999. Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for his services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked him 13th on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Since 2000, Rushdie has lived in the United States. He was named Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University in 2015. Earlier, he taught at Emory University. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he published Joseph Anton: A Memoir, an account of his life in the wake of the events following The Satanic Verses. Rushdie was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in April 2023.
Rushdie's personal life, including his five marriages and four divorces, has attracted notable media attention and controversies, particularly during his marriage to actress Padma Lakshmi.

Reviews

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yay, I've done it! I've finally read a Salman Rushdie book. I've been fascinated by him ever since I learned about The Satanic Verses controversy years ago, but his books are generally long and dense and I am a lazy reader these days. When I saw this short collection of stories pop up on NetGalley, however, I knew it was time to give him a chance.

And, well, this was good. His prose is lyrical but not overwrought, and there's just something about his writing style that I really enjoy. It did feel a bit like reading a classic novel, however, and had I picked up this book blindly, I would not have been at all surprised to find out that it had been written a century ago. This isn't at all a bad thing, but I guess my point is that it isn't necessarily an easy read. There's a fair amount of philosophizing and soul searching by the characters within, and it's not a book you can blast through in the same way you would the newest John Grisham novel.

The Eleventh Hour focuses heavily on the themes of old age and death, and, in one case, even life after death. There are stories within stories and ghostly visits from Hieronymus Bosch. There are tsunamis and deep symbolism (I still have no idea what that last story was about but it was lovely) and languages personified. There are characters who mysteriously disappear and characters with regrets and characters who are obviously based on a certain WWII codebreaker done dirty. There's humor and seriousness. Some of the stories feel as if they're from a different age while still addressing modern-day issues. And the writing … have I mentioned that the writing is outstanding? I mean, just listen to it:

When the king married not one but two of his nieces, the word incest was simply expunged from the lexicon and made illegal to use; and after that it became necessary to make other changes to the dictionary, to redescribe rape as love, horror as patriotism, bullying as good governance, war as peace, freedom as slavery, and ignorance as strength, so as to ensure that the absolute monarch had absolute power over the language itself, over vocabulary and syntax and metaphor and fable, and to turn the world upside down, so that it would only mean what the monarch wished it to mean.

Rushdie is obviously brilliant, and his writing is just as brilliant as he is.

So, yeah. I enjoyed this quintet of stories and I'm thinking that perhaps it's time to finally pick up The Satanic Verses and see what all the fuss is about.

My overall rating: 4.5 stars, rounded up. Four stars for the stories themselves, but five stars for the delightful writing found within the stories.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House for providing me with an advance copy of this book to review. Its expected publication date is November 4, 2025.

[Helga چـو ایـران نباشد تن من مـباد · Rating 5 out of 5]

You shouldn’t play the ghost, lest you become one.

This is how it’s done! Like a master weaving a beautiful carpet, only a true raconteur is able to write oh-so delicately, meticulously and intricately stories in which one would find oneself lost; stories which would make one feel feelings long forgotten; stories which would shake one’s soul and threaten to overwhelm and engulf.

Each and every one of the stories in this book is unique, relevant and concise. They are real, yet they pretend to be unreal, magical, otherworldly and mythical.
Lighthearted yet spirited, the five stories in this book revolve around the themes of memory, identity, legacy and belonging.

In the South

Each morning he regretted that he had not died in the night.

The Musician of Kahani

But the heart wants what it wants, does it not. And sometimes the heart will find a way.

Late

All hope abandon.

Oklahoma

Nothing a glass of good whiskey can’t fix.

The Old Man in the Piazza

We have ceased to be the poetry lovers we once were… we have become bar-room moralists.

[Alexander Carmele · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Und die Moral von der Geschicht“ … die Sprache allein richtet es nicht.

Inhalt: 3/5 Sterne (disparat-märchenhaft)
Form: 3/5 Sterne (flüssig-trist)
Leseerlebnis: 2/5 Sterne (seltsam didaktisch)
--> 8/3 = 2,66 = 3 Sterne

Nach Victory City , seinem letzten Roman, und Knife , einem autobiographischen Bericht über den Attentat, der auf ihn verübt wurde, legt Salman Rushdie nun eine Erzählsammlung mit Die elfte Stunde vor, die vordergründig über das Altern handelt, aber im Grunde das Scheitern und die Desillusionierung in Bezug auf das, was Kunst vermag allegorisiert. Im üblichen magischen Realismus-Stil, dessen repräsentativster Vertreter Gabriel García Márquez, entwickelt Rushdie vier symbolisch-allegorisierende quasi-Märchen, die die Machtlosigkeit der Kunst verhandeln, mit Ausnahme der ersten: Im Süden, in welchem es um die Hass-Liebe zwischen zwei alten Männern geht, die nebeneinander wohnen.

Der Auftakt jedoch hat nichts mit den weiteren Erzählungen gemein (ist auch bei weitem kürzer), die allesamt mehr oder weniger die Wirkung der künstlerischen Arbeiten reflektieren:
Die Musikerin von Kahani: Eine begnadete Musikerin findet eine Möglichkeit, mit Musik die Welt zu verändern, u.a. Zerstörung herbeizurufen.
Saumselig: Ein homosexueller Schriftsteller findet keine Trost mehr durchs Schreiben.
Oklahoma: Ein US-amerikanischer Schriftsteller gerät in eine Depression und sucht Hilfe in der Utopie von Franz Kafkas Amerika, dem Naturtheater.
Der alte Mann auf der Piazza: Ein alter Mann und die Sprache sitzen am Marktplatz und streiten um die Vorherrschaft über die Herzen der Menschen.
Augenscheinlich gerät die Idee der Sprache und die Hoffnung auf Veränderung durch künstlerischen Ausdruck bei Rushdie unter die Räder.

Niemand hört zu. Niemanden kümmert es. Bis [unsere Sprache] sich schließlich erhebt und schreit, wie sie es schon einmal getan hat. Sie schreit in einem noch höheren Ton als zuletzt. Höher und höher, bis ihr Schrei das menschliche Hörvermögen schließlich übersteigt. Im selben Moment zerspringen alle zur Piazza gerichteten Fenster, Scherben regnen herab, und auf dem Platz gibt es viele Verletzte und ihrerseits Schreie. Deren Ton ist niedriger als der jenes qualvollen Schreis, den unsere Sprache ausstößt, und sie zerbrechen auch nichts.

Rushdies Erzählungen lesen sich nüchtern. Die magischen Einsprengsel verebben, die klar herausgearbeiteten ethischen Thesen und Divisen prägen die Handlung der Figuren, die kein Eigenleben gewinnen. Die Schablone dessen, was sein soll, aber nicht ist, flimmert über den Sprachhorizont und verödet die erzählte Welt. Sie trocknet aus, verrennt sich in Nebensächlichkeiten und Schattengefechte und hinterlässt eine Art von Unterdruck, der die Wortensembles zunehmend entleert und als Leerformen brandmarkt.

Und dann meinte er plötzlich, auf der anderen Seite, auf der leeren, angrenzenden Veranda, einen Schatten zu sehen, der sich bewegte. Warum nicht ich?, rief er laut, und wie zur Antwort flackerte ein Schatten, wo Junior immer gestanden hatte.

Weder Immanenz noch Transzendenz, eine in sich zerstrittene Erzählweise tröpfelt Wasser auf den heißen Stein und hinterlässt wie dieses nichts als Schemen, ein pars pro toto, ein hätte-können-sein, das sich aber nicht textimmanent, glaubwürdig und vor allem nachvollziehbar einlöst. Mit anderen Worten: sehr gewollt.

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Details – ab hier Spoilergefahr (zur Erinnerung für mich):
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Inhalt:
●Zusammenfassung/Inhaltsangabe:
1.) Im Süden: Senior und Junior, Nachbarn, beide Rentner, die sich eigentlich nicht leiden können, aber denselben Namen besitzen und fast zur selben Zeit geboren wurden. Senior, unglücklich verheiratet, Junior einsam, wird ab und zu von einem Freund besucht, den Senior nicht leiden kann. Auf dem Weg, als sie ihre Pension abholen, gerät eine Vespa mit zwei Studentinnen außer Kontrolle, Junior weicht aus, fällt, stößt sich den Kopf und stirbt. Die zwei Studentinnen sind außer sich vor Trauer – wenig später gibt es einen Tsunami, der die ganze Küstenlandschaft zerstört. Senior überlebt. Sieht wie die Studentinnen unter dem Balkon von Junior trauern, meint einen Schatten auf dem Balkon zu sehen, vermisst Junior.
2.) Die Musikerin von Kahani: Ein Ich-Erzähler gibt die Geschichte einer Familie wieder, Mutter Informatikerin, Vater Mathematiker. Sie bekommen eine Tochter, die früh Begeisterung für Musik zeigt, früh, alle Lehrer beeindruckt und zur Berühmtheit gelangt. Der Vater scheitert daran, als erster den Fermatschen Satz zu beweisen – und schließt sich einem hedonistischen Guru an, verlässt die Familie, nachdem seine Ehefrau einen Algorithmus verkauft hat, ihren Sohn, für viele Milliarden. Die Tochter tritt auf, wird immer berühmter, verliebt sich in einen Konzern-Magnaten-Sohn. Sie heiraten mit großem Brimborium. Der Vater lebt bescheiden bei seinem Hedonisten-Guru, der immer ausschweifender lebt und sich beschenken lässt. Dann wird seine Tochter schwanger. Er will sie sehen. Er lässt ein Konzert in seiner Nähe organisieren. Sie riecht den Braten und schwört, ihn zu verfluchen, wenn er sich nicht bei der Mutter entschuldigt. Hierfür spielt sie eine magische Musik, die die Steuerfahnder auf die richtige Spur lockt. Der Laden des Gurus geht hoch, der Guru verschwindet, und der Vater marschiert zu Fuß zurück zu seiner Familie. Derweil gibt es ein Drama um das Baby. Es atmet nicht mehr. Die Tochter soll aber das tote Kind in sich behalten, um die Feierlichkeiten, die bereits gebucht worden sind, nicht zu stören. Der Vater protestiert vor dem Haus des Magnaten friedlich. Dann kommt es zur Geburt, die Familie flieht zusammen. Die Tochter trennt sich vom Sohn, und sie spielt wieder ihre Musik, die die Magnaten-Familie in den Ruin und Tod treibt. Am Ende lebt die Familie wieder friedlich, nur verspricht die Tochter keine Sitar mehr zu spielen – Göttin der Zerstörung und Lebens, Schiva, die Tochter mit ihrer Sitar.
3.) Saumselig: Ein Schriftsteller, schwul, der sich in zwei indische Männer verliebt, schreibt ein Debüt, einen antikolonialistischen Roman, wird berühmt und Ehrenfellow eines Colleges, schreibt aber nie wieder, muss auch seine Neigungen verbergen. Dieser Schriftsteller stirbt und erscheint 1971 einer jungen Inderin, die seine Geschichte erfährt. Im Zweiten Weltkrieg hat er den Enigma-Code geknackt, Geheimhaltung von 30 Jahren nach Kriegsende, muss eingehalten werden. Nach dieser Zeit hat er eine fröhliche Menage a trois erlebt, die herauskommt, er wird vom Provost bedroht, muss sich chemisch kastrieren lassen, oder verliert seine Privilegien, er entscheidet sich fürs Kastrarieren. Nach dem Tod rächt er sich am Provost und zwingt ihn (indem er ihn durch Todeskälte foltert, wenn sie am selben Ort sich befinden), zu einem öffentlichen Geständnis. Nach 1975 wird S.M. Arthur geehrt. Er verabschiedet sich von der Inderin aber davor, in einer Art Acheron-Kahn, mit seinen zwei indischen Geliebten. Und man erfährt, dass sich die Enigma-Codebrecher-Gruppe die Ritter der Tafelrunde nannte.
4.) Oklahoma: Ein indischer Schriftsteller, mehr oder weniger erfolgreich, lernt einen älteren US-amerikanischen Schriftsteller und seine Frau kennen. Er nennt sie Onkel und Tante K. Er besucht sie oft, und bald fühlt sich die Tante ernüchtert und verärgert von der Aufdringlichkeit. Der Onkel redet viel von Kafkas Oklahoma in dem Roman „Amerika“, den er gerne vollendet gesehen hätte. Irgendwann schläft der Kontakt ein. Der Schriftsteller hört davon, dass Onkel K sich im Meer ertränkt hat. Als er Kontakt mit der Tante aufnimmt, weist sie ihn brüsk zurück. Irgendwann erhält er Schriftstücke, die er als die von Onkel K erkennt, zwei Fragmente über einen Stein des Wahnsinns, die Einsetzung und die Entfernung. Mit der Entdeckung fährt er zur Tante, die ihn empfängt, die Seiten durchliest und dann mit dem Gewehr davonjagt. Er sei ein Stalker und habe die Seiten gefälscht, sie seien von ihm selbst. Bevor er wegläuft, grabscht er nach einer Visitenkarte. Onkel K ist nicht gestorben, nur verschollen, und Tante K weiß, wo er sich befindet, in Oklahoma, und führt dort einen Süßwarenladen. Er fährt dorthin, eine Bodenschwelle markiert den Übergang, er empfindet den Ort surrealistisch. Eine Frau skandiert Verse. Er wartet, bis der Laden öffnet, wartet, bis der Laden fast wieder schließt, tritt ein und findet dort sich selbst, mit den Worten, er wurde erwartet (Kafka Zitat von „Das Urteil“?). Dann folgen ein paar Worte des Herausgebers, dass das Manuskript nie vollendet wurde, und zwar von einem Schriftsteller, der „Seltsam Gewöhnlich“ heißt, au indisch.
5.) Der alte Mann auf der Piazza: Ein alter Mann, der sich nicht finanzieren braucht, einfach da ist (?), geht auf einen Platz, belauscht das Leben. Am anderen Ende sitzt die Sprache. Es gab eine Zeit des Jas, dann des Neins, und dann gab es Streit und Zwist, und durch einen Zufall wird der Mann Richter über die ungelösten Fragen, wird bekannt. Er fühlt sich wohl, doch irgendwann schreit die Sprache ein zweites Mal, wie nach der langen Zeit des Jas, und allen fehlen die Worte und sie verschwindet vom Platz, der Agora.

[Flo · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intriguing collection of short stories and novellas centered around death. Miraculous and magical, yet somehow very real, they come from an author who sees life after... death. Surely, it would be wise to recognize the dangers before "death," if only at the eleventh hour.

[None Ofyourbusiness Loves Israel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Eleventh Hour opens in a city that has run out of patience with both time and weather. Two ancient men, Senior and Junior V., live in the south of India, where the heat bickers with the sea and each morning begins with ritual insults. "You look like a man waiting to die," says one, to which the other replies, "That is better than looking like a man still waiting to live." Their duet of senility and sarcasm forms a hymn to futility. Senior, a patriarch with two hundred and five descendants and a wife whose wooden leg thuds like punctuation, believes that abundance is a divine prank. Junior, an underachiever with no progeny and even less ambition, prefers mediocrity to meaning. Together they turn mortality into a spectator sport, complete with dentures, pensions, and theological debates about which one’s ankles will fail first. The fall, when it comes, belongs to Junior, courtesy of a Vespa and gravity, and the subsequent tsunami provides the divine punchline that the gods had clearly been saving for the last act.

Then the book skips continents and centuries of faith, tumbling into The Musician of Kahani, where arithmetic replaces prayer and pianos stand in for prophets. Meena and Raheem Contractor are mathematicians who find love in logic and disaster in the absence of it. "Two plus two will always equal four," he says, until his wife invents a search engine named TALIB and sells it to an American with "a giant schoolboy’s greed." Their daughter Chandni arrives as the millennium’s prodigy: a child who can play Beethoven at four and outgrow her teachers before she reaches double digits. Her mother calls it genius; her father calls it divine interference. Between sitar lessons and asthma attacks, Chandni becomes the city's sainted performer, while Raheem, humiliated by his wife's fortune and his daughter's fame, finds spiritual comfort in a neighbor who preaches Anti-Religion with the fervor of a televangelist and the libido of a Renaissance pope. The cult, the concerts, and the commerce merge into a single question of what the soul costs when priced in rupees.

By the time the story reaches its closing movement, love and logic have both lost their tuning. Chandni's music, once celestial, begins to echo the madness of those who claim enlightenment through seduction, and Meena's atheism begins to sound like prayer uttered backward. The city of Kahani, renamed to suit each new century's vanity, fills with disciples, paparazzi, and prophets who trade transcendence for ticket sales. "Let your karma run over your dogma," says the guru, while his flock applauds the pun without catching the warning.

The final two stories, "Late" and "The Old Man in the Piazza," feel like the book's afterthoughts and its confession booth at once. By this point, Rushdie has dropped the fireworks and kept the smoke. "Late" is a meditation on lateness itself, the existential variety rather than the punctual one. It follows a man drifting through the diminishing hours of life with the air of someone waiting for a train that has long since departed, but who insists on holding the ticket anyway. The writing there is stripped of ornament and heavy with irony. Every line murmurs that time does not heal; it only edits. Beneath the wit, the story aches with the recognition that survival can be more humiliating than death, and that remembering too much is its own kind of punishment.

"The Old Man in the Piazza" closes the book as both elegy and encore. The narrator watches an aging figure who could be an artist, a prophet, or a lunatic, pacing a square where history has grown tired of happening. The setting feels Mediterranean but really takes place inside the mind of anyone who has lived long enough to suspect that purpose was a rumor.

Rushdie walks his characters from noise to quiet, from quarrel to observation. Intellect will argue itself hoarse, love will age into irony, and even art will forget its tune, yet life continues to stage its farce because surrender would be dull. We may be out of time, but at least we kept the conversation interesting.

Every argument in The Eleventh Hour ends in a kind of elegy for belief, whether in god, art, or intellect. Time itself grows tired of its own arithmetic, and the book ends where Rushdie's imagination always thrives, in that sly borderland where holiness and farce shake hands and forget which is which.

Rushdie has written a last laugh that is an anthology of endings, stitched together with the sly humor of someone who has spent a lifetime arguing with mortality and bureaucracy in equal measure. He fills every page with the noise of argument, the vanity of intellect, and the quiet panic of realizing that time has run out and nobody learned much. The tone flickers between elegy and farce, which, in his case, are the same register.

It feels like a farewell party where the host keeps refilling your glass so you do not notice the lights going out. It has the playfulness of his early work and the weariness of his later years, yet neither cancels the other. Beneath the jokes about gods, cults, and digital messiahs, there is a sincere exhaustion with belief itself. It seems as if faith, politics, and art have all become performance genres, and everyone involved is a professional hypocrite. Still, the writing glitters with affection for human folly; he treats foolishness as the last honest instinct.

[Stephen the Bookworm · Rating 4 out of 5]

How do you attempt to review Salman Rushdie ? One of the most revered and respected international authors. You simply immerse yourself in the joy of the prose.

This is a literary master in his prime challenging us and reflecting upon life, friendship, relationships and society but most of all approaching the final years of life- the Eleventh hour.

These five stories are set in India , England and America and at different periods over the last century.

Each story has underlying messages especially about human nature; greed and power and ego are very prevalent- these are ultimately modern fables.

Stories consider a friendship between two elderly men; the power of musical genius who is trapped into a marriage by a power hungry family but retribution is sweet; the ghost of academic who realises that he can take revenge on a man who ruined his life; an author who wants to know the truth about the man who inspired him and finally and in many ways the most powerful - a simple tale about the power of speech and what happens when society changes and loses its voice!!

Enigmatic, intriguing, questioning and beautifully and magically composed- this quintet is a wonderful read.

Highly recommended.

Thank you to Jonathan cape and Netgalley for the advance copy

[Lindsay Andros · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his first published work of fiction since he was attacked in 2022, Rushdie’s focus is death. Each of the five stories in this collection has common themes, but dealt with in very different ways. As always, Rushdie’s prose is both magical as if from a different time and current to issues plaguing our world today. I don’t think I know of any other writer who does this so consistently and successfully. This man is truly a treasure to the literary community and the world.

Here are some thoughts for each story:

IN THE SOUTH
- Takes a long and tedious time to get to the point, but great ending
- Don’t really need all the family stuff or smaller details — could spend those words on something more meaningful. Needs some tightening.

THE MUSICIAN OF KAHANI
- Rushdie just has a way of injecting magic into his prose, not even through his subject matter, but through his diction and syntax.
- I love that his narratives border on fairy tales and it is often stylistically necessary to distance the prose because of that, but I do wish he’d put us in a moment sometimes.

LATE
- Awesome first paragraph
- General thought: I’m not loving the narrator interjections throughout all these stories.
- Love chapter 5 where Rosa is going through Arthur’s story ideas — excellent way to build character and themes
- Also in chapter 5 — conversation between Rosa and ghost of Arthur is fantastic
- Pacing is very off. Great buildup, but the revelation and resolution are very rushed. Would have also loved more development of the relationship between Arthur and Rosa; as it is, her tears feel unearned. This may have made a stronger novel or novella than story.

OKLAHOMA
- Oh fuck yeah (re: post card at the end of chapter 2 introducing a mystery)
- Oh no. This description of Fernando VII sounds a little too close to home right now. Also love the lil allusion to 1984.
- Muses about how prose can be just as beautiful as poetry, and then fulfills that thought! Yes!
- Interesting form that adds considerable depth to the story
- Strongest in the collection, if not always the most enjoyable.

THE MAN IN THE PIAZZA
- Love the personification of language
- An excellent last line that brings everything together

OVERALL
God, I love this man. An excellent collection. Four stars.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

If old age was thought of as an evening, ending in midnight oblivion, they were well into the eleventh hour.

The Eleventh Hour: A Quintet of Stories is the latest work by Salman Rushdie.

The heart of the quintet is three original novellas : The Musician of Kahani (78pp); Late (71pp) and Oklahoma (58pp).

These are top and tailed - complemented if I'm being generous; padded-out if I'm being harsh - by two older short stories (17pp and 18pp respectively), each previously published in the New Yorker - In the South, published in 2009, and The Old Man in the Piazza, in 2020.

Rushdie's own description of the quintet:

“The three novellas in this volume, all written in the last 12 months, explore themes and places that have been much on my mind – mortality, Bombay, farewells, England (especially Cambridge), anger, peace, America. And Goya and Kafka and Bosch as well.
...
I’m happy that the stories, very different from one another in setting, story and technique, nevertheless manage to be in conversation with one another, and with the two stories that serve as prologue and epilogue to this threesome. I have come to think of the quintet as a single work, and I hope readers may see and enjoy it in the same way.”

The link, such as their is, relates to ageing. The quote opening my review, and which makes this connection with the collection's title explicit, is a relatively straightforward, but well crafted, tale of two old men, friends albeit of a bickering nature, set at the time of the 2001 tsunami.

The Musician of Kahani is an explicit nod to Midnight's Children, set in the same Breach Candy neighbourhood of Mumbai (a city our narrator chooses to call Kahani), and about another baby born at midnight, but here the advent of the millennium rather than partition.

There was only a crescent moon that night, the night of the millennium—a third-night new moon, according to the almanacs—but it shone brightly nonetheless, and Raheem and Meena named their daughter after the prophetic moonlight. Chandni. Chandni Contractor. That’s our girl.

Allow me to clear up one thing right away. This Chandni was not the billion-dollar baby that has been mentioned. No, no. She would grow up to be, one might say, not one but two significant characters. First she became the celebrated Musician of Kahani. And after that, as we shall see, she became That Baby’s mother.

This story, replete with references to Bollywood (but also pleasingly a well informed if cliched one to Fermat's last theorem) and, as it proceeds, with a strong dose of magic realism, feels the most Rushdiesque of the stories, including his preference for hyperbolic levels of wealth and of talents. And perhaps the least connected with the overall theme of the collection.

Late is set in a Cambridge college in the early 1970s, very loosely based on the life of Alan Turing (although a rather feel-good one relatively: the codebreaker here lives longer, and his wartime role and the terrible way his sexuality is acknowledged much sooner after this death), a type of literary and erudite ghost story which stylistically feels to have shades of Marias (although he'd set it in the 'other place'). The posthomous connection, a kinship if not a friendship, between the elderly Honorary Fellow, the late S. M. Arthur, with an interest both personal and artistic in Indian art, and a first year history scholar, R, from India and one of the first batch of women students at the college, is at the heart of the story, which is very effectively set against the backdrop of the so-called 'permissive era' as well as the conflicts in Vietnam, and, although less visible in the West, the Bangladesh War of Independence, and which also debates the role of good vs. freedom and religion vs. state.

The war in Indochina continued and was much on the minds of her fellow students. But the war in Bengal, which she alone cared about, ended. The enemy surrendered, and a new country, Bangladesh, was born. On the same day—an auspicious coincidence, surely?—an opportunity arose that, R. hoped, might lead to the additional spectral encounters she so fervently desired. It was announced by Lord Emmemm at a meeting in the Great Hall that Honorary Fellow S. M. Arthur had left all his worldly possessions to the College, in perpetuity, including his art collection and the copyright of, and all future income from, his classic novel. In return the College authorities had decided that the Honorary Fellow’s rooms would not be reallocated. Rather, they would be preserved exactly as he had left them, as a kind of museum, a shrine to his genius.

Oklahoma is the most complex and meta-fictional of the stories, the title and much of the story an explicit nod to Kafka's Amerika, as well as Calvino's Mr Palomar and Zbigniew Herbert's Mr Cogito, as well as to the art of Velázquez. Bosch and Goya (which are also nodded to in Late):

“So,” he said, “you want to take on the public subject, the big stuff. Democracy, fascism, history, ethics, revolution, God, mythology, ethics, the grand questions. You’ll probably fail. Most public writers do. Me, I wrote my war novel, but these days I’m increasingly interested in the private subject. You have your Cogito . . . me, I pay attention nowadays to Mr Palomar, who is the alter ego of Calvino of course, and who only cares about the patterns of birdsong in the trees in his garden, the calls and responses, and the rhythm of waves arriving at the nearby beach, which also, so to speak, call and respond. And of course I’m failing too. Now you must take a glass of whiskey and then maybe we can get along.

The Old Man in the Piazza is a fable-like tale of language and beliefs:

This is how it has been in the square ever since the end of the so-called time of the “yes.” That dark age began forty years or so ago, a time when for a period of half a decade it was made illegal to argue. We all were obliged to agree, at all times. Whatever proposition was made, no matter how risible—the transubstantiation of bread and wine into flesh and blood, the nocturnal metamorphosis of the immigrant population into drooling sex monsters, the benefits of raising the taxes paid by the poor, the transmigration of souls, or the necessity of war— it was forbidden to debunk it, even though immigrants ran the best bakery in the town and our favorite wine store also, and even though most of us are poor, and none of us remembers any earlier lives as tortoises, or foreigners, or eels, and only a small minority of us are warlike by nature. It was necessary at all times to assent.

Even our language—the language in which such great poetry has been written!—was altered. She was no longer permitted the word “no.” [...] Our language, however, sulked. She came to sit by herself in a corner of the piazza and often shook her head, mournfully. She became pedestrian. She informed us that she was unwilling for the moment to fly or soar, or even to travel by train or bicycle or bus. She said she felt leaden-footed and preferred to sit quietly and contemplate the things languages contemplate when they are by themselves and feel maltreated.

A very impressive collection - and I feel Rushdie may have found his late style in the form of the novella, one which allows him space to exercise his elaborate world-building but without it becoming tiresome.

Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rushdie is probably the most creative, imaginative author I read. His writing is incredibly beautiful. The magic spell of Rushdie’s work is like none other. His latest is a group of five stories about aging and death. Each story is quite different, and each is told from a different life perspective. Some were more appealing to me than others, but that is always the case with a group of stories. If you are going to read Rushdie, you have to let go of your reality and let yourself fall into his sphere of beautiful writing, amazing storytelling and magical realism. It worked for me!

[Jolanta (knygupė)]

3,5*
"Vienuolikta valanda" - pirma Salman Rushdie grožinė knyga išleista po 2022-jų pasikėsinimo jį nužudyti. Autorius išgyveno 15 peilio dūrių. Tad nekeista, jog šiuos penkis pasakojimus jungia senatvės ir mirties temos. Vykęs pavadinimas. "Vienuolikta valanda" vakaro.

Esu trumposios prozos žanro gerbėja, ir Rushdie dažniausia man patinka, o ir temos - mano, tačiau šie tekstai paliko mane nesujaudinę. Ehhh. Atrodė, lyg autoriui ankšta šiame prozos žanre.

[Theo Logos · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quartet of stories focused on winding down, settling with unfulfilled legacy, facing endings. Rushdie’s magical realism creeps into two of the tales. The first two tales are excellent, while the final one felt a bit too arcane, but overall a strong collection.


In The South 4 ⭐️
A grim and poignant story of end of life regrets, relationships, and loss.

The Musician of Kahani 4 ⭐️
Rushdie revisits the neighborhood of his Midnight’s Children with a tale of family betrayal, capitalistic greed, mystical charlatans, and the terrible revenge of a magical musician.

Late 3 1/2 ⭐️
The story opens when its principal character wakes up dead. From there it briefly explores the metaphysics of ghosts, before exploring unfinished business, the criminalization of homosexuality, the secrets of World War II British code breakers, and long delayed vindication.

Oklahoma 2 1/2 ⭐️
Kafka. Bosch. Madness. Disappearance. Totalitarianism. Really didn’t connect with this story.

[Kat · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m honestly left speechless, in awe. Salman Rushdie deserves a Nobel Prize. This is truly top-tier prose.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this volume of five short stories very much.
The stories are:

1. In the South read by Neil Shah
2. The Musician of Kahani read by Nicholas Khan
3. Late read by Naveen Andrews
4. Oklahoma read by Sanjeev Baskar
5. The Old Man in the Palazza read by Sid Sagar

The stories take place in India, England and America where Rushdie has lived and made a home. He explores what it is to be human and in particular, what it means to be approaching the "eleventh hour" of your life - a culmination of a lifetime of decisions and a reckoning of sorts. Some characters are waiting to die, whilst others are waiting to live. Rushdie writes with great insight and imagination.

Favorite quote:
Describing the ailments of aging - "The slow failing of the soft machine."

[Leslie Nipkow · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to say that this is vintage Rushdie, but no, this is modern-day Rushdie. It could be today. Right now. The Eleventh Hour is a 5-story collection written with Rushdie's poetic voice. I'm not a short-story aficionado -- please don't come at me -- but I am an avowed Rushdie devotee, and each of these stories is a miniature world, a perfection. Each could be the seed of a novel, but together they resonate emotionally, particularly to those of us suffering through the agonies of the Trump eras and the return of capital-F fascism and demagoguery to the world stage, as it leaves us stunned, depressed, and enraged.

Rushdie is a global citizen, and these pieces take place in England, America, and, of course, India. Perhaps as a result of Mr. Rushdie's near-murder, these stories have death at their centers, but, as they say, it's complicated. "In the South" centers around the death of one of two longtime friends/neighbors, but it's also about the nature of friendship in a very particular way that those of us who complain about our friends will recognize. "The Musician of Kahani" takes us back to the locale of "Midnight's Children," with magic realism rearing its head -- and music --- the female voice -- demanding its due. In this story, we in 2025 will recognize the ultra rich cousins of our American oligarchy and celebrigarchy, which isn't yet a term but welcome to the language, portmanteau.

This leads me to the final story, "The Old Man in the Piazza," which lives in the realm of metaphor personified. Here Rushdie explores the nature of language -- deftly wielding his facility with such -- while also presenting us with the question: Who do we believe and why? And throughout the entire collection, we are face-to-face with the issue of free speech, of voice, and of the personal power inherent in it.

In the other two pieces, there is a delicious ghost haunting the hallowed halls of Cambridge, and, in "Oklahoma," a pointed exploration of the nature of mentorship, and the ramifications of betrayal by a beloved mentor. Oh, and, also thrown into that stewpot: a faked death... maybe.

With every new book, Mr. Rushdie's powers expand, and what this reader most appreciates is the way he reflects the age for those of us living it alongside him. Long may he write.

Wholeheartedly recommend.

[Smriti · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5.

The first two stories I really loved. It felt like I was going home. The third story was nice as well. The other two were meh.

[GONZA · Rating 4 out of 5]

Among these five stories, some are unforgettable and others a little less so, but since the standard is decidedly high, even the worst ones are still remarkable. I admit I'm biased, but I like Rushdie and I also like how he portrays India and some Indians.

Tra questi 5 racconti ce ne sono alcuni indimenticabili ed altri un po' meno, peró siccome il livello é decisamente piuttosto alto, anche i peggiori restano notevoli. Ammetto di essere di parte ma a me Rushdie piace e mi piace anche come racconta l'India e alcuni indiani.

[A Dreaming Bibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for providing me with an eARC.

This was my first Salman Rushdie book, I've been meaning to read his books for a while now. This was a great collection of short stories. I especially enjoyed the first one "In the South". It was in a sense relatable in terms of the setting and that ending was quite smooth. I liked the relationship between Senior and Junior as well. The Old Man in the Piazza was a great story as well with a great ending. Some of the stories I personally didn't connect to and felt that it dragged on a bit but apart from that, this is a set of short stories about human relationships and emotions that I would definitely recommend.

[ariana · Rating 5 out of 5]

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

[Ben Coleman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rushdie's first new writing to be published after the knife attacked he suffered in 2022 sees him produce 3 novellas (sandwiched between 2 short stories written before) ruminating on the inevitable - age, death, memory, and so much more. This collection works best through having a shared thematic exploration but modulating between different perspectives, writing styles, narrative structures that keep everything fresh but in conversation with each other. Each story has something new to offer from an exploration of a dead scholar's secrets, to the meta-fictional exploration of a creative's insecurities, to the dazzling exploration of modern culture's view of free speech and moral absolutism.

Short story collections are incredibly hard from me to rate as every story must be perfect to achieve a 5-star, but this is an extremely strong collection and a much stronger piece of work than Rushdie's last published fiction of Victory City.

[Christopher Walthorne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A much better short story collection than Rushdie’s earlier one (East, West), with five tales that all grapple, in some way, with mortality. There is a case to say that two of the stories - Late, and The Old Man in the Piazza - are slightly weaker than the others, but this is still a wonderful book from one of the world’s best writers.

[Dolf van der Haven · Rating 2 out of 5]

A reviewer for The Guardian called this book Rushdie’s Swan-song: not because he is dying yet, but because most of these three novellas and two short stories have something to do with death.
There was only one of these five pieces that I liked, the novella called “Late”, which could be called a Dark Academia ghost story, but without the cliches of that genre. The rest of the book felt uninspired, more attempts at writing than anything well-developed. I guess the author’s forte is not these short forms, but rather the long, complex novels that he has become famous for.
Hopefully Rushdie still has it in him to write a full novel, so that his real Swan-song does more justice to his abilities.

[Trishita (TrishReviews_ByTheBook) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lying in bed, sick and reading stories haunted by death, it could have gotten really dark but I was in the clever hands of a master humourist. How does Rushdie continue to bend and mold language to his whim, how does he continue to use it as his most tenacious toy, this time even inventing language as a woman at her breaking point in the last story. ‘Our words fail us’ he writes after our much abused language has finally broken down and left us silenced. An apt allegory of the times we live in, where we talk too much but end up contributing nothing of meaning.

This book is made up of five stories, all set in the three countries Rushdie has called home, India, England and the US.

The first three stories breathed life into me, he still writes India so well, as if once it’s bred into you, you live there forever. One of the stories could be seen as an homage to his grand epic Midnight’s Children, situated in that same world, another story of magic. Almost drowning in nostalgia, I cried as he bid a final farewell to his childhood home in Bombay, to his old friends and so many memories, knowing he’s not going that way again, even in his fiction.

The stirring ambition of his best novels is long gone, but he still conjures the sprightly playfulness of old. His imagination is a wild thing, it continues to run without reins. And he still knows how to throw a literary feast, feeding anyone who is open to the taste of wonder.

In all the stories, life holds many arguments with death, and it may be that Rushdie is into his eleventh hour, but he’s been evading death for decades. May he continue arguing for another while. I loved all this spirited bickering, quarrelling, panicking, negotiating, understanding. So flooded with life even in the face of oblivion. 4 stars!

[Chloe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Buy one book get multiple genres! These stories are all fun and all very different, united if you (want to) think about it - and the clue’s in the title - by Rushdie’s thoughts about death and dying. We should all think about it really, but we don’t, so it is nice to let Rushdie do it for us, and tbh he does it better. The final parable though is an exhortation to use language or lose it, if we privilege being right over being creative. The most lyrical story, about a magical musician, is the most appealing, but each tale is a mini-legend and I am grateful that Rushdie gets to spend his eleventh (and may it be a long eleventh) age writing for us.

[Jaclyn]

Mortality is very much on the minds of our elder male writers. This book is in an interesting conversation with new work by Saunders and Barnes. I love how funny Rushdie is even when dealing with such weighty subject matter.

[Jamad · Rating 2 out of 5]

I came to The Eleventh Hour hoping for a late-career resurgence from Salman Rushdie, but unfortunately this collection left me mostly underwhelmed. The stories feel fragmented and often strangely thin, as though Rushdie is reaching for his old imaginative spark but never quite grasping it. The trademark playfulness is here, but in diluted form, and the attempts at fable, metafiction, and moral commentary rarely build into anything satisfying.

One line did stand out, though, in the story “The Musician of Kahani”:

“So Chandni the Musician of Kahani can be said to be one of the very rare artists whose work directly impacted and shaped the world in which she lived.”

It’s hard not to read this as Rushdie referring to himself, positioning his own creative life within the fiction. The sentiment is striking, but it also highlights the unevenness of the book: the self-referential gestures feel more confident than the stories surrounding them.

Overall, The Eleventh Hour feels more like an echo of Rushdie’s past strengths than a compelling work in its own right. A few interesting ideas surface, but the writing lacks the energy and invention that once made his fiction so distinctive. For me, it lands as a rather flat and forgettable collection, despite its ambitions.

[Stephen Hoffman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a mixed bag for me.

I quite enjoyed the story In the South, though it didn't set my pulse racing.

I thought the Musicians of Kahani was excellent, with Rushdie showing what a master storyteller of life, love, anger and rhe beauty of music he is.

I thought late was OK but a bit too off the wall for me.

Oklahoma bar the odd bit wasn't really for me. It was to esoteric for my taste and a bit all over the place.

I found the Old Man in the Piazza an interesting read and fitting finale.

[Robert Wechsler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rushdie's new story collection is another example of what a wonderful writer he is. The stories are all very different, and all of them work. I enjoyed the last story, “The Old Man in the Piazza,” the most, for its fabulism and simplicity (I appreciate this sort of simplicity more as I get older), and I especially loved the story that’s playfully based on E. M. Forster.

Rushdie’s playfulness is the most notable quality in the book, a playfulness that is at least as much for the reader’s benefit, which is not true of some playful writers. It’s a great quality to find in an older writer whose talents aren’t significantly diminished and who has gone through a lot that could have made him angry.

[Cara · Rating 2 out of 5]

The writing and story building as such are truly remarkable, Rushdie shapes words in a manner so beautiful that one is entirely engulfed by them.
Or at least you would be if the stories weren’t as predictable as they are. Maybe I am not sharp witted enough for his books and possibly the stories are simply lost on me.
However, out of the five stories (each of which discuss death of different kinds in one way or the other), only the first and the last story actually appealed to me and managed to grasp my attention, the rest seemed unnecessarily drawn out and dry. They seem to want to make a point, but keep missing it, just barely keeping afloat by the elegant writing, but definitely not enough for me personally to stand on their own.

[Ingrid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Five stories capturing, as only Rushdie can, the final stages of life with a cast of characters spread across continents and eras, yet mirroring, or refracting, contemporary headlines.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Eleventh Hour": At the last possible moment before it's too late.

When Salman Rushdie wrote Knife, describing the vicious knife attack upon himself by a lunatic he only refers to as A.(Asshole). The natural progression for his next book would be the subject of death.

In these five stories, death and the afterlife are the common theme. Ghosts of dead people travel through most of these stories grappling with the past, regrets and what could have been. Rushdie, obviously felt these emotions, when he was attacked and managed to survive.

Some of the stories are strong - a couple not so much, but the point is made and taken.

The best story of the five - I feel,is Oklahoma. You might have to reread it to understand it but it puts all these stories in perspective.