logo
episode-header-image
Nov 2025
12 m

In 'The Eleventh Hour,' Salman Rushdie w...

NPR
About this episode
Salman Rushdie lived for decades under a death sentence and survived a knife attack three years ago. His latest book The Eleventh Hour is his first work of fiction since that near-death experience. These short stories and novellas center around the end of life, what might come after, and the idea of personal legacy. In today’s episode, Rushdie joins Here & Now’s Scott Tong for a conversation that touches on mortality, changes to the author’s writing process, and his first ghost story.


To listen to Book of the Day sponsor-free and support NPR's book coverage, sign up for Book of the Day+ at plus.npr.org/bookoftheday

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy
Up next
Yesterday
Novels by Ben Reeves and Matt Haig look at life through the eyes of death (literally)
Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.Two new novels use death to shed new light on life, but these aren’t depressing reads. In Everything Was Beautiful and N ... Show More
19m 50s
Jul 30
'The Friend' author Sigrid Nunez is out with a new collection of short stories
Sigrid Nunez – author of novels like The Friend and What Are You Going Through – is out with a new collection of short stories. It Will Come Back to You features characters like a middle-age daughter coping with her mother’s memory loss, a Brad Pitt lookalike and a housekeeper wo ... Show More
10m 20s
Jul 29
ESPN soccer correspondent Julien Laurens on why Kylian Mbappé is “wired differently”
French footballer Kylian Mbappé was one of the World Cup's biggest stars this summer, despite France's loss to Spain in the semifinals. ESPN soccer correspondent Julien Laurens has written a new book called Kylian Mbappé: The Definitive Biography, which details the soccer star’s ... Show More
6m 38s
Recommended Episodes
May 2024
Salman Rushdie: When I die, I know there will be nothing
One of the world’s most acclaimed, award-winning authors Salman Rushdie has spent the last thirty years with a death threat attached to his head. A threat that almost became a reality two years ago when he brutally stabbed 15 times by a stranger. Few people have come so close to ... Show More
49m 6s
Jun 2024
Salman Rushdie - ‘I’d rather have had a different life’
TW: this episode contains graphic descriptions of violence and injuries. Two years ago, Sir Salman Rushdie, one of the most celebrated and famous authors in the world was on stage at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York, when a figure dressed in black clothes and a mask ... Show More
53m 39s
Jul 2019
Salman Rushdie Reads "The Little King"
Salman Rushdie reads his story from the July 29, 2019, issue of the magazine. Rushdie has published eleven novels, including "Midnight's Children," "The Satanic Verses," "Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights," and "The Golden House." His new novel, "Quichotte," from whi ... Show More
54m 21s
Jun 2024
Salman Rushdie
One of the world’s greatest novelists, Salman Rushdie has won many prestigious international literary awards and was knighted for services to literature in 2007. He won the Booker Prize in 1981 for Midnight’s Children, a novel that was also twice voted as the best of all-time Boo ... Show More
43m 29s
Oct 2024
The Ezra Klein Show: Salman Rushdie
<p>Salman Rushdie's "Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder," has been nominated in the nonfiction category as part of this year's National Book Awards, which will take place in mid-November. This week, we are running Rushdie's conversation with Ezra Klein from earlier this ... Show More
1 h
Apr 2024
Salman Rushdie Is Not Who You Think He Is
<p>Salman Rushdie’s 1988 novel, “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/323746/the-satanic-verses-by-salman-rushdie/" target="_blank">The Satanic Verses</a>,” made him the target of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who denounced the book as blasphemous and issued a fatwa c ... Show More
59m 49s
Aug 2011
Salman Rushdie Reads Donald Barthelme
Salman Rushdie reads Donald Barthelme's "Concerning the Bodyguard," and discusses it with The New Yorker's fiction editor, Deborah Treisman. "Concerning the Bodyguard" was published in the October 16, 1978, issue of The New Yorker, and was collected in "Forty Stories." Salman Rus ... Show More
29m 48s