{"id":15778,"date":"2025-11-07T18:49:40","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T01:49:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/rushdies-first-fiction-since-his-attack-heres-why\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T19:35:02","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T19:35:02","slug":"rushdies-first-fiction-since-his-attack-heres-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/rushdies-first-fiction-since-his-attack-heres-why\/","title":{"rendered":"Rushdie\u2019s first fiction since his attack. Here\u2019s why"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Author
Author Salman Rushdie appears during an interview in New York on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (AP Photo\/Richard Drew)<\/span>Richard Drew<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NEW YORK \u2013 Salman Rushdie’s new book, his 23rd, is also a career reset.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Eleventh Hour,\u201d which includes two short stories and three novellas, is his first fiction since he was brutally stabbed on a New York lecture stage in 2022. His recovery has been physical, psychological and creative. Just finding the words for what happened was a painful struggle that culminated in his memoir \u201cKnife,\u201d published in 2024. Fiction \u2013 the ability to imagine \u2013 was the final and crucial step, like the awakening of nerves once feared damaged beyond repair.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile I was writing \u2018Knife,\u2019 I couldn\u2019t even think about fiction. I had no space in my head for that,\u201d Rushdie told The Associated Press last week. \u201cBut almost immediately after I finished the book, before it came out, it\u2019s like this door swung open in my head and I was allowed to enter the room of fiction again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Author
Author Salman Rushdie appears during an interview in New York on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (AP Photo\/Richard Drew)<\/span>Richard Drew<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Author
Author Salman Rushdie appears during an interview in New York on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (AP Photo\/Richard Drew)<\/span>Richard Drew<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Two of the pieces in his book being released Tuesday \u2013 \u201cIn the South\u201d and \u201cThe Old Man in the Piazza\u201d \u2013 were completed before the attack. But all five share a preoccupation with age, mortality and memory, understandable for an author who will turn 79 next year and survived his attack so narrowly that doctors initially couldn\u2019t find a pulse.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Eleventh Hour\u201d draws from Rushdie\u2019s past, such as his years at Cambridge, and from sources both surprising and mysterious. The title character of \u201cThe Old Man in the Piazza,\u201d an elderly man treated as a sage, originates from a scene in the original \u201cPink Panther\u201d movie, when a pedestrian looks on calmly as a wild car chase encircles him. The novella \u201cOklahoma\u201d was inspired by an exhibit of Franz Kafka\u2019s papers that included the manuscript of \u201cAmerika,\u201d an unfinished novel about a European immigrant\u2019s journeys in the U.S., which Kafka never visited.<\/p>\n

For \u201cLate,\u201d Rushdie had expected a straightforward narrative about a student\u2019s bond with a Cambridge don, inspired by author E.M. Forster and code-breaker Alan Turing. But a morbid sentence, which Rushdie cannot remember writing, steered \u201cLate\u201d toward the supernatural.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had initially thought that I would have this friendship, this improbable friendship between the young student and this grand old man,\u201d Rushdie explained. \u201cAnd then I sat down to write it, and the sentence I found on my laptop was, \u2018When he woke up that morning, he was dead.\u2019 And I thought, \u2018What\u2019s that?\u2019 And I literally didn\u2019t know where it came from. I just left it sitting on my laptop for 24 hours. I went back and looked at it, and then I thought, \u2018You know, OK, as it happens, I\u2019ve never written a ghost story.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Rushdie will always carry scars from the attack, notably the blinding of his right eye, but he has reemerged in public life, with appearances from Manhattan to San Francisco. A native of Mumbai, he moved to England in his teens and is now a longtime New Yorker living with his wife, poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths.<\/p>\n

His most celebrated novel is \u201cMidnight\u2019s Children,\u201d a magical narrative of the birth of modern India that won the Booker Prize in 1981. His most infamous work is \u201cThe Satanic Verses,\u201d in which a dream sequence about the Prophet Muhammad led to allegations of blasphemy, rioting and a 1989 fatwa from Iran\u2019s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini calling for Rushdie\u2019s death. Although Iran said in the late 1990s it would no longer enforce the decree, Rushdie\u2019s notoriety continued. His assailant, Hadi Matar, was not born when \u201cThe Satanic Verses\u201d was published. Matar, found guilty of attempted murder and assault, was sentenced in May to 25 years in prison. A federal trial is pending.<\/p>\n

Rushdie also spoke with the AP about his legacy, his love of cities and how his near-death experience did not make him more spiritual. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.<\/p>\n

AP: Age is obviously a theme throughout this book, and something you had been thinking about before the attack \u2013 the idea of \u201cWill I be valued at the end?\u201d \u201cDoes it matter that whatever knowledge I have accumulated?\u201d These are things that you think about?<\/p>\n

RUSHDIE: I think about what maybe all of us think about. What do we amount to in the end? What did our life add up to? Was it worth it or was it trivial and forgettable? And if you\u2019re an artist, you have the added question of will your work survive? Not just will you survive, but will the things you make endure? Because certainly, if you\u2019re my kind of writer, that\u2019s what you hope for. And, it would be very disappointing to feel that they would just vanish.<\/p>\n

But I really love the fact that \u201cMidnight\u2019s Children,\u201d which came out in 1981, is still finding young readers, and that is very pleasing to me. That feels like a prize in itself.<\/p>\n

AP: Something else that struck me about the book was how much it was a book of stories about stories. The conscious art of storytelling.<\/p>\n

RUSHDIE: Yes, and much more than in the others. I think particularly the story called \u201cOklahoma\u201d is very much a story about storytelling and about truth and lies.<\/p>\n

\"This
This cover image released by Random House shows "The Eleventh Hour" by Salman Rushdie. (Random House via AP)<\/span>Richard Drew<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Salman Rushdie appears during an interview in New York on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (AP Photo\/Richard Drew)Richard Drew NEW YORK \u2013 Salman Rushdie’s new book, his 23rd, is also a career reset. \u201cThe Eleventh Hour,\u201d which includes two short stories and three novellas, is his first fiction since he was brutally stabbed on a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15779,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-15778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15778"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19837,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15778\/revisions\/19837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15778"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=15778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}