Acclaimed author Sir Salman Rushdie is set to release his first work of fiction in nearly three years, following a stabbing that left him blind in one eye in 2022.
The Eleventh Hour will consist of a collection of stories from around the world, set across India, England and the US.
The work will be published by Vintage, part of Penguin Random House, on 4 November – more than three years after he was stabbed while on stage by an assailant who was convicted last month of attempted murder and assault.
“Salman Rushdie’s new fiction moves between the places he has grown up in, inhabited, explored, and left,” the publisher said.
According to Penguin Random House, the book depicts the story of “two quarrelsome old men in Chennai, India, who experience private tragedy against the backdrop of national calamity”.
For readers familiar with Sir Salman’s Midnight’s Children, for which he won the Booker Prize, this upcoming work revisits the Bombay neighbourhood of that book, where “a magical musician is unhappily married to a multibillionaire”.
Sir Salman said the book is made up of three novellas – short stories – all of which were written in the last 12 months.
The stories explore themes and places present in his mind, the author added, highlighting “mortality, Bombay, farewells, England (especially Cambridge), anger, peace, America, and Goya and Kafka and Bosch”.
News of his latest work comes a year after Sir Salman released an autobiographical account of what happened when he was stabbed on stage during an event at the Chautauqua Institution.
Knife: Meditations After An Attempted Murder explored Sir Salman’s account of the attack, when he was stabbed more than a dozen times by Hadi Matar, 27.
As well as vision loss in one eye, the attack in August 2022 left Sir Salman with other severe injuries, including damage to his liver and a paralysed hand caused by nerve damage to his arm.
In February, Matar was found guilty of his attempted murder and assault and now faces a sentence of more than 30 years in prison.
Sir Salman testified during the trial. Recalling the incident, he said he was struck by the assailant’s eyes, “which were dark and seemed very ferocious”.
He initially thought he had been punched, before realising he had been stabbed.
The 77-year-old previously spent several years in hiding after the 1988 publication of The Satanic Verses – a fictional story inspired by the life of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad – triggered threats against his life.
The surrealist, post-modern novel sparked outrage among some Muslims, who considered its content to be blasphemous – insulting to a religion or god – and was banned in some countries.
A year after the book’s release, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini called for Sir Salman’s execution. He offered a $3m (£2.5m) reward in a fatwa – a legal decree issued by an Islamic religious leader.
The British-Indian author has released as many as 16 novels, including Midnight’s Children, for which he won the Booker Prize.
(BBC News)
