The Eleventh Hour

Author: Salman Rushdie

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Published on 6 August 2026 by Vintage Publishing (Vintage) in the United Kingdom.

Paperback | 272 pages
127 x 197 x 21 | 192g

Dazzling new short stories from Salman Rushdie that transport us around the world from Bombay neighbourhoods to elite English universities‘Boisterous… Full of panache’ Sunday Times If old age was thought of as an evening, ending in midnight oblivion, they were well into the eleventh hour.

Two quarrelsome old men in Chennai, India, experience private tragedy during national calamity. Revisiting the Bombay neighbourhood of Midnight's Children, a magical musician is unhappily married to a multibillionaire. In an English university college, an undead academic asks a lonely student to avenge his former tormentor.

These five dazzling works of fiction move between the three countries that Salman Rushdie has called home – India, England and America – and explore what it means to approach the eleventh hour of life.

‘One of the most important voices in contemporary literature’ Independent‘Exuberant’ The Times‘Salman Rushdie is a genius’ A.M. Homes‘Entertaining and winningly heartfelt’ Daily Telegraph*A BOOK OF THE YEAR for the Sunday Times, Guardian, Financial Times, Economist and New Yorker*