The Eleventh Hour: A Quintet of Short Stories

In these five shorter prose pieces (short stories or novellas), Salman Rushdie turns his gaze to life’s final act. These nostalgic and magical stories, steeped in Kafkaesque imagery, are set in three countries: India, England, and America; they blend cultural particularities and layers, present a gallery of unforgettable images, and even dare to portray death not as an objective end, but as an event in which the dying person is personally involved.

Rushdie’s inimitable language, with its power to transform, makes the author’s voice life-affirming, even as his gaze is fixed on the end of the human journey on earth.

Do we come to terms with death, or do we rebel against it? Do we spend our „eleventh“ hour in contemplative peace or in furious rage? How do we find satisfaction when we do not know the end of our own story? These are the questions Rushdie poses. And we ask ourselves what this book represents—a farewell, or clearing the way for something entirely new?