Intelligence Squared: Salman Rushdie on Mortality, Memory and The Eleventh Hour

Episode Date: November 5, 2025
Host: Kavita Puri
Guest: Salman Rushdie
Producer: Mia Sorrenti

Episode Overview

This episode features an in-depth conversation between author Salman Rushdie and journalist Kavita Puri. Rushdie discusses his latest book, The Eleventh Hour, a collection of novellas and stories reflecting on mortality, memory, nostalgia, creativity, censorship, the importance of free speech, and literary legacy. Drawing from personal experience—including the attempt on his life in 2022—Rushdie delves into themes of loss, the power of literature, the changes in global society, and the shifting landscape for writers. The episode provides listeners with rare insight into Rushdie’s deeply personal motivations and the broader cultural forces shaping his work today.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

Returning to Fiction After Trauma

• Rushdie’s Return: After several years focused on nonfiction (notably, Knife), Rushdie expresses relief and joy at returning to imaginative writing.
  • Quote: “I've always thought of myself as primarily somebody who makes things up.” (03:27)
• Discovery Over Planning: Rushdie describes aging as a writer—moving from structured planning to a more organic, day-to-day discovery of stories as he writes.
  • Quote: “Writing has become more a process of discovering what I'm writing by doing...a lot of it is day to day discovery.” (05:07)

[03:20-06:03]

The Eleventh Hour: Form and Inspiration

• Genesis of the Book: The first story, “Late,” began as a surprising ghost story; Rushdie didn’t plan for a collection, but the novella form imposed itself.
  • Quote: “I didn't choose. It chose me.” (03:56)
• Themes of Mortality: Reflection on mortality shaped the collection, especially after the assault in 2022.
  • Quote: “I was thinking a lot about the subject of mortality for pretty obvious reasons.” (06:03)
• Nostalgia and Place: Stories return to places from Rushdie’s childhood, particularly Bombay, as a “one last walk up the hill.”
  • Quote: “It's a way of saying goodbye...I don't think I'll be walking up that hill again.” (06:58)
  • Puri acknowledges the sense of nostalgia, and Rushdie clarifies he means literary goodbye, not necessarily a physical one. (08:08-08:39)

[06:03-09:22]

Memory, Exile, and Cosmopolitanism

• Cosmopolitan Bombay: Memories of a diverse, vibrant childhood that no longer exists in today’s more fragmented and tense Mumbai.
  • Quote: “The city that I grew up in...still love bits of it, fragments of it are around...actual life of the city is very different now and less likable, more adversarial.” (09:54)
• The Power of Childhood Places: Rushdie aligns himself with Faulkner in finding endless inspiration from a single location; exile increases nostalgia and gives new perspectives.
  • Quote: “The place where you've been a child, where you've been born and raised, has a certain kind of power over you which nowhere else has.” (11:04)

[09:30-13:17]

The Outsider’s Perspective

• Outsider as Writer: Rushdie reflects on being an outsider in places like London and New York, and how arrival narratives have shaped him.
  • Quote: “New York is also a city which is created by people arriving...so you can write novels of arrival, which I've done once or twice.” (13:35-14:32)
• Settings as Life’s Journey: Stories in the book mirror Rushdie’s own migratory trajectory—India, UK, US.
  • Quote: “It’s a kind of miniature potted history of my work.” (14:48)

[13:17-15:05]

Rising Authoritarianism, Nationalism, and Loss of Cosmopolitan Places

• Cosmopolitan Loss: The decline of truly diverse, open societies is global, not just limited to India.
  • Quote: “It’s not just about any one place. I mean, it’s a large phenomenon.” (15:34)
• Worry Over Youth Turning Right: During travels in Europe, Rushdie notes the alarming trend of young voters supporting the far right.
  • Quote: “Young people are losing faith in the values of democracy.” (15:34)

[15:05-16:28]

Art, Politics, and the Limits of Literature

• Timeless, Personal, and Contemporary: Rushdie wants the stories to be both personal and to speak to our own time’s crises—authoritarian figures, political unrest.
  • Quote: “I wanted it to have [a contemporary dimension], not just to be, you know, old man looking back at happier days.” (16:57)
• Fictionalizing Real History: He adapts Goya’s experience with Spanish king Fernando VII as a stand-in for modern despots. (18:15-19:11)

[16:28-19:11]

The Power and Limits of Words

• Admission of Limitations: Rushdie confesses that language—and thus literature—sometimes fails in addressing real-world crises, such as war.
  • Quote: “...there are moments when you have to not over claim for what writing can do...Ending a war is one of them.” (19:42)
• Loss of Dialogue: He laments increasing societal division and closed-mindedness, noting literature requires open minds.
  • Quote: “People are so angry...anger, vindictiveness, revenge...One of the things that those emotions do is they close the mind.” (20:46-21:27)
• Declining Readership? While there are concerns about people reading less, he notes that literature was always a minority pursuit—and highlights phenomena like Harry Potter as proof people still read.
  • Quote: “Somebody's reading...maybe there are girls like that and 28 million of them.” (22:17)

[19:11-22:49]

Literature as Connection and Consolation

• Can Words Heal?: Rushdie hopes literature still bonds and consoles.
  • Quote: “That's what writers want. I just have this feeling at the moment...that people are not listening to each other, you know, and that that's dangerous.” (22:59-23:43)

[22:49-23:57]

Language, Free Speech, and Public Discourse

• Language as Character: In his story “Old Man in the Piazza,” language is personified—a deliberate choice inspired by surrealist writer Donald Barthelme.
  • Quote: “She just showed up and sat in a corner...sometimes the story tells itself.” (23:57)
• The Piazza as Metaphor: For Rushdie, the piazza represents public discourse and the ideal of free speech.
• Experience with Censorship: Rushdie details the real, ongoing threats to free speech, drawing on his own life under a fatwa and current global book banning trends, especially in the US.
  • Quote: “....more than 23,000 books are now on various banned lists in America...23,000 book bans in the land of the free, you know.” (26:00-27:15)
• Free Speech Under Threat: He notes attacks on free expression come historically from the right but now also from the left via “deplatforming.”
  • Quote: “The answer to speech is more speech. The answer to bad speech is better speech.” (27:15)

[23:57-29:05]

Publishing, Sensitivity, and Artistic Self-Censorship

• Sensitivity Readers: Rushdie criticizes the trend of publishers employing sensitivity readers, calling it “the death of art.”
  • Quote: “If anybody who might be—might find a problem with a particular phrase has the right to have that particular phrase removed...that's the reason why there are lots of books in bookshops.” (30:06-30:39)
• Self-Censorship and Appropriation: Modern constraints and debates frighten young writers out of writing about lives beyond their own. Rushdie sees all art as “appropriation” and decries narrowing artistic possibilities.
  • Quote: “If you can't write about lives and experiences which are not your own, then your spectrum is unbelievably small.” (31:14)

[29:42-32:53]

Freedom, Goodness, and Social Order

• Compatibilities and Contradictions: The stories examine the ancient tension between individual freedom and the collective good, with reference to eastern and western societies.
  • Quote: “Freedom is very individual. So this is a version of the ancient battle, philosophical battle of society and the individual.” (34:09)
• Borders and Disruption: The ongoing relevance and pain caused by artificial lines—inspired by decolonization and T.H. White’s image of the earth seen from above, without borders.
  • Quote: “What you can’t see from the air...is you can’t see frontiers. There are no borders. It’s just the earth.” (36:47)

[33:54-36:47]

Legacy, Loss, and Literary Generations

• Mourning a Generation: Rushdie honors recently deceased friends (Paul Auster, Martin Amis, Christopher Hitchens), describing the loss as a “loss of laughter.”
  • Quote: “It feels like there's a generation in the process of checking out...and it was quite a generation.” (37:16)
• The “Bright Young Things”: Reflecting on having been part of a loosely defined literary generation, Rushdie now appreciates the readerly openness of that era to experimental forms.
  • Quote: “We provided it.” (39:54)

[36:47-39:54]

Autobiography and Form

• Autobiography vs. Invention: Rushdie asserts all writing is autobiographical in a sense, coming from his view on the world.
  • Quote: “One way of answering that is to say that it's not autobiographical at all, and the other is to say that everything one writes is completely autobiographical.” (39:59)
• Novellas and the Future: Rushdie has rediscovered a passion for the novella form—strong, concise, perfect in their limitations.
  • Quote: “Some of the most beautiful things ever written are at that length. You wouldn't want them to be a page longer than they are.” (41:22)
• Commitment to Continue: Despite the recurrent refrain that “words fail us,” he pledges to keep writing.
  • Quote: “Yeah. No, I mean, I haven't got anything else to do. I might as well do that.” (41:31-41:37)

[39:54-41:37]

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On returning to fiction post-trauma: “I've always thought of myself as primarily somebody who makes things up.” (03:27)
• On changing writing process: “Writing has become more a process of discovering what I'm writing by doing.” (05:07)
• On exile and memory: “The place where you've been a child...has a certain kind of power over you which nowhere else has.” (11:04)
• On free speech: “The answer to speech is more speech. The answer to bad speech is better speech.” (27:15)
• On censorship and sensitivity readers: “I would not put up with it for very long because I think that's the death of art.” (30:06)
• On artistic risk: “Nothing should be off limits. Everybody can write about everything. But it is also true that they have to do it well.” (32:53)
• On generational change: “It feels like there's a generation in the process of checking out.” (37:16)
• On autobiography: “Everything one writes is completely autobiographical. I mean, it comes out of my take on the world.” (39:59)
• On commitment to writing: “I haven't got anything else to do. I might as well do that.” (41:31)

Key Timestamps

• 03:18 - Rushdie on returning to fiction
• 06:03 - On “The Eleventh Hour” and themes of mortality
• 09:54 - Reflections on nostalgia and changing cosmopolitanism
• 19:42 - On the limitations of literature in times of crisis
• 22:49 - On literature as solace, despite social divisions
• 26:00 - Threats to free speech and book banning in the US
• 30:06 - Critique of sensitivity readers, self-censorship, and artistic constraints
• 34:09 - Individual vs. collective in society and stories
• 36:47 - Borders, disruption, and T.H. White's metaphor
• 37:16 - Loss of friends and the passing literary generation
• 39:59 - On autobiography in writing
• 41:31 - Promise to keep writing

Conclusion

This episode is a candid meditation on age, memory, creativity, and the public square in art and politics. Rushdie is at once reflective and combative, amiable and deeply serious, urging both writers and society to value the open exchange of ideas and push back against censorship from all quarters. The conversation is packed with literary wisdom, personal reminiscence, and observations on our turbulent times—essential listening for writers, readers, and anyone who cares about the state of free thought.