Salman Rushdie's "Eleventh Hour", City Arts and Lectures

The Book

I was excited to receive in the mail Salman Rushdie’s latest book, The Eleventh Hour, a quintet of stories (Random House, 2025). In Late, my favorite story in the collection, a retired Cambridge academic of South Asian descent wakes up one day and discovers he is dead. I loved the novel and immensely creative plot, and was moved by the compassionate portrayal of the Cambridge don as he recalls his life and interacts with a young student who alone can see him.

The Musician of Kahani, an homage to Bombay, hearkens back to Midnight’s Children. Chandni Contractor has an extraordinary power -- at four years of age, she opens the lid of a piano and starts playing beautifully. Years later, she meets Majnoo and they fall in love. “Love lands where it lands and doesn’t ask for explanations. Explanations come from the world of rationality, and love is unreasonable.” Simple, wise and eloquent.

The name of the city has changed (to Mumbai), and he calls it Kahani (stories), as his stories all come from there. Indeed this story is an incredibly nostalgic account of a villa named Westfield estate. “Many of the stories I have told were born here. I think this will be the last such story.” And “Here I am visiting my yesterday years one last time and they are visiting me. I will not come this way again.”  I wept at this end, this goodbye, connecting the dots to the day the stories will stop entirely. Rushdie is a treasure, and I wish him many healthy years and many more words.

Two of the stories have been published previously in the New Yorker. I had read The Old Man and the Piazza, a fable about the manipulation of language, when it came out in 2020. In the South, which appeared in 2009, is about two elderly curmudgeons who live next door to each other and converse across adjacent balconies. It is amusing as well as a touch wistful, and the author seemed to be confronting his own mortality. Oklahoma, a nod to Kafka, was not very appealing to me.

Through them all, Rushdie’s trademark wit, verve and wordplay are a delight, his sympathy for his characters moving as always.

The Book Tour

I saw Rushdie on his book tour at City Arts and Lectures in San Francisco on November 16, 2025, where he was in conversation with the brilliant Poulomi Saha, UC Berkeley Professor and absolute dynamite! After Saha's eloquent introduction to Rushdie and his 24th book, the author walked on stage to resounding applause which he soaked in, humorously exhorting the audience to keep going. Saha, a worthy interlocuter who matched her famous subject's energy and humor with sensitivity and wit, pulled off an engaging and lively discussion.

A rebirth

Saha commented that this book feels like a return--was it a rebirth? Probably yes, Rushdie responded, before recounting how the stories came to him. "After Knife, the stories started coming out. I said oh I remember you. I found the way back to the stories."

The first story that came was one in the middle -- Late, a ghost story (my favorite). It was set in an unnamed college (Kings College which Rushdie attended) at an unnamed university (Cambridge). Two vital things happened at that time, Rushdie explained: first, homosexuality was legalized, and second, "they let girls in. Everything went co-ed." The story is about an elderly gay academic who didn’t have to hide his nature anymore. Rushdie thought it was going to be about an improbable friendship between the academic and a young woman student from India, and then as he wrote, a sentence appeared: when the protagonist woke up, he was dead.

Saha commented that it is not a story about vengeance, it’s about repair. They quoted a minor character in Satanic Verses who said, "I know what ghosts are. It’s unfinished business." The story didn’t feel driven by vengeance. Rushdie replied that dismissal may be the best revenge, "You’re nobody." Referring to his would-be assassin, he said "I satisfied myself that I don’t care about him anymore." He recounted that months passed and other stories showed up.

In response to comments that this book is a goodbye, he declared it is not!  It is a book that showed up—the stories started flowing after he wrote Knife, his 2024 memoir about the ghastly murder attempt that he survived in 2022.

Where is home?

Where you hang your hat. He has lived in New York for 26 years, the idea of home becomes plural. A banyan tree spreads by putting down more and more new roots. This is a metaphor for immigration. He has a sense of home in many places. The role of literature and art right now? He doesn’t want to have a utilitarian view of literature. “I want to be beautiful, not useful.”

What is magical realism?

Commenting on magical realism and what it is, Rushdie stated that the combination of imagination and history is where literature happens. Who controls the narrative? Whose story gets told? We are the owners of the narrative and it’s our job to tell the story properly.

How does he decide whether a story will be a novel or a short story? Writing is a kind of listening. You ask your characters what they need. And when they tell you, that’s the story you tell. Sometimes the story tells you it’s a short story.

What is he reading? He mentioned Kiran Desai’s book, “Colossal!” [That it is. Reader, I refer you to my review in these pages.] He is also reading a new biography of James Baldwin, which tells us the story of Baldwin in terms of the people he loved the most. Buford Delaney, a painter, said that Baldwin “showed me it is possible for a black man to be an artist.”

A seventh grader asked, How do we fight censorship? Rushdie responded that you fight it by not putting up with it. In the US today there are "23,000 active book bans. Beloved, To Kill a Mockingbird, some of the best books ever written."

There was no book signing, but signed copies were available for purchase. The City Arts and Lectures session was recorded, and can be heard here. I highly recommend listening to it.