In 'The Eleventh Hour,' Salman Rushdie writes about morality, revenge and ghosts

Summary

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NPR's Book of the Day: Salman Rushdie on "The Eleventh Hour"

Date: November 5, 2025
Host: Andrew Limbaugh
Guest: Salman Rushdie
Episode Theme: Mortality, Revenge, Ghosts, and the Power of Art in Rushdie's Latest Collection

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Main Theme & Purpose

The episode centers on Salman Rushdie’s new book, The Eleventh Hour, a collection of novellas and short stories. Through magical realism and sharp wit, Rushdie explores mortality, vengeance, unfinished business, and the state of civilization, blending personal experience with wider societal reflections. The conversation highlights how these themes play out across the stories, drawing on Rushdie’s lived history and recent near-death experience.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Mortality—A Personal and Literary Focus

• Backstory: Rushdie’s near-fatal stabbing in 2022 and his advancing age have sharpened his focus on life’s final act.

• Literary Influences: Cites Edward Said’s essay "On Late Style," discussing whether artists face death serenely or with rage.

  "I began to think about how people engage with that final act. And there's different stories and different approaches to that subject."
  — Salman Rushdie [03:20]

• Balanced Response: Rushdie sees both rage and serenity in facing mortality, sometimes even within the same day.

2. Ghosts and Unfinished Business

• Story Highlight: In an English ghost story, a deceased academic must resolve unfinished business before moving on.

• Passage Reading: Rushdie reads from the scene where the ghost realizes he is, ironically, always late now:

  "All my life I was famous for my punctuality...And now that time has slipped my grasp, I'm going to be—well, I am—forever late. The late S.M. Arthur."
  — Salman Rushdie (reading) [04:17]

• Theme: The idea that ghosts represent “unfinished business,” a notion seeded in The Satanic Verses and revisited here.

  "I've always thought of that idea of a ghost being unfinished business. And in the case of this story, finishing that unfinished business became the action of the story."
  — Salman Rushdie [06:57]

3. Justice, Revenge, and Art as Magic

• "The Musician of Kahani": Set in Mumbai, featuring a musician with magical power, inspired in part by the myth of the Pied Piper. Explores art’s power to do both good and harm.

  "I had this idea of wanting to write about music having magical powers ... that germ was sitting in my head for quite a long time and eventually found its expression."
  — Salman Rushdie [08:50]

• On Artistic Responsibility: Rushdie stresses that art should not be didactic, but should raise questions for readers.

  "Writers can, and writing can, ask the questions which oblige the reader to answer those questions for himself or herself."
  — Salman Rushdie [07:54]

4. Language Embodied, Freedom, and Censorship

• "The Old Men in the Piazza": The final story personifies language as a woman in a society where free speech is forbidden.

• Creative Surprises: Rushdie describes his delight at how stories sometimes take unexpected turns during the writing process:

  "The moment it happened, I thought, oh, I really like that, and I want to see what I could do with that."
  — Salman Rushdie [09:50]

• Writing Methodology: Rushdie compares his evolving writing style to the difference between composing a symphony (structured) and playing jazz (improvisational).

  "It's the difference between composing a symphony and playing jazz. It's as if my literary inclination has traveled from the symphonic to the more improvisational."
  — Salman Rushdie [11:02]

5. The Eleventh Hour—A Broader Meaning

• Personal vs. Collective Mortality: Rushdie notes that the title also reflects anxieties about the state of civilization in India, the UK, and the US.

  "The 11th hour is not just about individual mortality, but also about civilization ... that was very much on my mind as well."
  — Salman Rushdie [11:42]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Recovery:
  "I surprised everybody, including my doctors, by my recovery. So I guess I'm lucky."
  — Rushdie [02:24]

• On Aging and Mortality:
  "I'm not in the first flush of youth anymore. I mean, I'm 78 now, so that in itself makes you think about the last act, you know."
  — Rushdie [02:55]

• On Storytelling Surprise:
  "For me, it's always a sign that the story has life when the story starts suggesting things to its author."
  — Rushdie [09:50]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Rushdie’s current health, reflections on mortality — [02:23–02:55]
• Edward Said and responses to death — [02:55–03:41]
• Reading from the ghost story; exploration of ‘unfinished business’ — [04:17, 06:24]
• Justice, revenge, and music’s magical power — [07:23–09:24]
• On artistic freedom and language as a character — [09:24–10:27]
• Writing process and improvisation — [10:42–11:30]
• Broader meaning of ‘The Eleventh Hour’ — [11:42–12:11]

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Tone & Style

The conversation is intimate, reflective, and occasionally playful, characteristic of Rushdie's signature blending of the real and surreal, wit and gravity. Both host and author maintain a tone that invites listeners to ponder serious themes while appreciating the joys and surprises of creative work.

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Conclusion

This episode of NPR’s Book of the Day offers a rich and multi-layered exploration of Salman Rushdie’s The Eleventh Hour. It delves into how personal upheaval, literary legacy, and societal change are intertwined in Rushdie’s latest work—inviting listeners to consider the persistent tension between rage and serenity in life’s final chapters, and the unfinished business we carry, both as individuals and as a civilization.

Transcript

[A]

Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. I suppose it's no surprise that the author, Salman Rushdie, has been thinking a lot about death. Yes, of course, there was the onstage stabbing attack that nearly killed him back in 2022. But even if that didn't happen, he'd still be a 78 year old writer. He is, as he himself puts it, not in the first flush of youth anymore. And so his new book is a collection of short works gathered under the title the 11th hour. And there are different perspectives on looking at not just death, but the time leading up to it. And in this interview with Here and Now, Scott Tong, Rushdie brings up a point made by the writer Edward Said, who said that some people respond to death with serenity and others rage. But for this book, Rushdie wondered, why not both? That's after the break.

[B]

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[C]

And the following message come from Warby Parker, the One Stop Shop for all your vision needs. They offer expertly crafted prescription eyewear plus contacts, eye exams and more for everything you need to see. Visit your nearest Warby Parker store or head to warbyparker.com free expression and courage and Salman Rushdie. They kind of go together. The generational fiction writer lived for decades under a death sentence and survived a recent stabbing attack. Now Rushdie's pen triumphs over the sword, or in this case, his attacker's knife, as today he publishes his first work of fiction since that attack three years ago. The 11th hour is a collection of short stories and novellas with his signature wit and magical realism. And just to catch you up, Rushdie won the Booker Prize in 1981 for Midnight's Children. His novel Satanic Verses came out in 1988, leading Iran's Ayatollah to declare it blasphemous and announce a death warrant for Rushdie, who went into hiding for years. Now after surviving the knife attack that took his right eye and the use of one arm, Salman Rushdie joins us to to Talk about the 11th hour. Welcome to the program.

[D]

Thank you. Good to be with you.

[C]

Can I ask how you're doing now?

[D]

Oh, I'm doing not so bad, thanks. I think I surprised everybody, including my doctors, by my recovery. So I guess I'M lucky.

[C]

That's great to hear. These stories in the 11th hour are about the end of life, what may come after, about legacy, sometimes getting even, even in death. Woody is always a beautiful read. Why this topic?

[D]

Well, it. I think partly it's a consequence of my having had a close shave, you know.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

That focuses the mind on such subjects as mortality as. Also, just because, you know, I'm not in the first flush of youth anymore. I mean, I'm 78 now, so that in itself makes you think about the last act, you know. And there's a brilliant essay by the writer Edward Said called On Late Style in which he discusses how artists have approached and should approach the kind of final act. And some people respond with serenity and others respond with rage. Thinking about that, I thought, it's not necessarily either or. You can be peaceful on Monday and angry on Tuesday. So anyway, I began to think about how people engage with that final act. And there's different stories and different approaches to that subject.

[C]

And these five stories in this new book, the Eleventh Hour, they occur in places you've lived. India, the U.K. the United States. So let's talk about one. You know, I'm not a big ghost person, but I love the clever, vengeful ghost in your story. Late in this book takes place in England, where a University academic named S.M. arthur finds himself in his pajamas. He feels kind of light on his feet and then realizes, timeout. I'm dead. And I wonder if you would read a brief section about this from page 109.

[D]

Okay. There was a commotion in the bedroom. They have come for the body. He understood and was struck by the note of detachment. His body had already become the body in the time that had elapsed, which by now he understood must be longer than it seemed. It's so strange, he told himself. All my life I was famous for my punctuality, even for showing up earlier than required. And now that time has slipped my grasp, I'm going to be well, I am forever late. The late S.M. arthur. This struck him as funny, and he began to laugh too hard, almost a hysterical love. Control yourself, he thought. You're a dead man. Dead men don't have much to laugh about.

[C]

There's this kind of confusion, a little bit of amusement at the same time. What's going on here?

[D]

Well, the fact that it became a ghost story took me by surprise. I had thought I was going to write about this elderly gent living out his later years in this college. And it was supposed to be a friendship that he forms with a young Indian woman student. They both have a love of India in common. And that brings them together.

[C]

Yes.

[D]

And then I sat down to write the story. And for some reason there appeared on my typewriter the words. When he woke up that morning, he was dead. I thought, where'd that come from?

[C]

And that happens, doesn't it? I mean, the story just takes off in the direction it goes.

[D]

Yes. And I just left the sentence sitting there on my laptop for a day or so thinking.

[C]

I.

[D]

What is this? And then I thought, you know, okay, as it happens, I've never written a ghost story. So. Time to do one.

[C]

So this academic ghost starts striking up these conversations with the student you talked about. Except, you know, one is dead and the other is this student who's still at the university over the holidays. And then this dead man, this ghost, realize he's stuck. He cannot leave the university. There's something left to do which takes us. I wonder if you'd be willing to read one other short passage on page 144.

[D]

He had now been dead for some months. But at last he began to understand why he was still here, still present within the college grounds. There was something incomplete about his life that needed to be completed before he could rest. Someday that might clear away the fog in which at present his being was engulfed. Revenge. Exoneration and revenge.

[C]

He needs to settle a score. He needs to clear his name before he can rest. I gather. Why is it important to write about that?

[D]

Well, you know, in a very much earlier novel, I think actually somewhere in the Satanic Verses, one of the characters says, I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business. That's what. It's just a passing remark in that novel. It's not what the novel's about. But I've always thought of that idea of a ghost being unfinished business. And in the case of this story, finishing that unfinished business became the action of the story. He had to take his revenge against the man who had wronged him.

[C]

Justice and revenge are also themes in one other story. In your new book, the book again the 11th hour, the story is the musician of Kahani. This one is based in Mumbai. The title character has this magical, mystical power and she uses it again to settle a score without kind of going into the whole story. It's a beautiful story. As a writer, is it important to think about art and power in this moment when we know in this country and others, books are disappearing from shelves?

[D]

Yes. I do think that it's a moment where artists have to consider how to Respond to the times we're living in, what's appropriate and what's not appropriate. I don't believe that art should be didactic. Speaking as a reader, I don't like writers who wag their finger at me and tell me what to think. But what I do think is that writers can, and writing can ask the questions which oblige the reader to answer those questions for himself or herself. And one of the things that happens in the Musician of Kahani is this young musician encounters a world of unbelievable wealth and privilege and selfishness and cavalier attitudes, and she has to think what she's going to do about it. Yeah, I was thinking about, for example, there's one or two stories that we all know in which music acquires magical powers. And the one that I was thinking of was the Pied Piper.

[C]

Oh.

[D]

Where the Pied Piper with his pipe can use it for good or for wrong. The first occasion, he uses for good to rid the town of its plague of rats, something which any New Yorker would be grateful for. And then he uses it as a kind of weapon of revenge and uses it for evil, if you like, by capturing the town's children. So I had this idea of wanting to write about music having magical powers, and I had no idea what the story was or what the magical powers might be. But that germ was sitting in my head for quite a long time and eventually found its expression.

[C]

As far as expression, you, of course, have faced censorship, threats, death threats with satanic verses, which of course came out in the late 80s. In the last story in this new book, the Old Men in the Piazza, you write of a time when it was illegal to argue, and language in the story is embodied as a woman. I'm curious, what was your intent to give language that particular human form?

[D]

Well, again, you know, a thing that I always like it when it happens to me, when the story surprises me. For me, it's always a sign that the story has life when the story starts suggesting things to its author. I wasn't expecting language to be embodied as a woman. And then one day when I was working on the story, she just walked into the piazza and sat down on a stool in the corner and announced herself. And I thought, oh, that's so interesting. I would never have, as it was, sat down consciously to think I will characterize language as a person. But the moment it happened, I thought, oh, I really like that, and I want to see what I could do with that.

[C]

That's incredible. Just to hear you tell the story this way. Oh, I Like that something happens and this person appears in my story. I mean, sometimes do you then have to think, is this turn the right turn to make in the story? Or maybe not.

[D]

Of course, sometimes you have to think, you know, that's not where I wanted to go. But as I've got older, my way of writing has become freer and more willing to see the process as one of discovery, that you discover what you're writing by writing it and to allow.

[C]

Yourself to be surprised sometimes.

[D]

Yeah. And I mean, the way I think about it is that, you know, when I was younger, I was much more structured as a writer. I needed architecture. I needed to hold on to that architecture. And the way I tell myself is that it's the difference between composing a symphony and playing jazz. It's as if my literary inclination has traveled from the symphonic to the more improvisational.

[C]

Yeah. Where suddenly you. You allow yourself eight bars of who knows what's coming. Improvisation.

[D]

Yeah. I'm enjoying this new way of doing things. It's not that new anymore, but newer.

[C]

Finally. Salman Rushdie, the 11th hour. Anything else you want to add about what that means to you?

[D]

Well, I think we live in a perilous time. And so the 11th hour is not just about individual mortality, but also about civilization and the danger to that which I find to be present in these three countries that I've spent my life thinking about. India and UK and America. There are variations of that theme in all those places. And so that was very much on my mind as well.

[C]

Salman Rushdie, his new book is the Eleventh Hour, a quintet of novellas and short stories. Salman, great pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time.

[D]

Thank you. It's been a pleasure for me too.

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