Rushdie to publish his first fiction book since stabbing

Salman Rushdie is releasing a new story collection, titled The Eleventh Hour, which will explore themes that have been much” on his mind, including mortality, anger and peace.

- LYDIA SPENCER-ELLIOTT

The publication marks the Booker Prize winner’s first fiction work since he was stabbed in New York in August 2022, as he wrote his 2023 novel, Victory City, prior to the incident. Attacks against Rushdie have been feared since the late 1980s after his novel The Satanic Verses was declared blasphemous by Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The Eleventh Hour follows two quarrelsome old men in Chennai, India, who experience private tragedy against the backdrop of national calamity. It will revisit the Bombay neighbourhood of Rushdie’s award-winning second novel, Midnight’s Children, where a magical magician is unhappily married to a multibillionaire.