Salman Rushdie, the acclaimed novelist whose life and career have long been marked by both literary triumphs and harrowing threats, has reemerged into the world of fiction with a new collection, The Eleventh Hour. Released on November 4, 2025, this book marks his 23rd published work and, perhaps more significantly, his first foray back into fiction since the brutal attack he endured on a New York lecture stage in 2022. For Rushdie, the journey to writing fiction again was neither swift nor straightforward; it was a process of recovery that spanned the physical, psychological, and creative realms.
In the aftermath of the 2022 stabbing, Rushdie faced a daunting road to healing. According to the Associated Press, even finding the words to describe what happened proved agonizing. That struggle culminated in his 2024 memoir, Knife, a book that chronicled his experience with a candor that resonated deeply with readers and critics alike. But fiction, that boundless territory of imagination and invention, remained out of reach—at least, for a while. "While I was writing ‘Knife,’ I couldn’t even think about fiction. I had no space in my head for that," Rushdie told the AP. "But almost immediately after I finished the book, before it came out, it’s like this door swung open in my head and I was allowed to enter the room of fiction again."
The Eleventh Hour is a collection comprised of two short stories and three novellas. Notably, two of these—"In the South" and "The Old Man in the Piazza"—were completed before the attack. Yet, all five stories share a set of preoccupations that feel especially poignant for Rushdie at this stage of his life: age, mortality, and memory. As Emma Alpern of New York Magazine observed, the collection is suffused with "old age, backward glances, and global and American politics." It's a natural turn for an author who will turn 79 next year and who, as the AP reported, survived his attack so narrowly that doctors initially could not find a pulse.
Rushdie’s stories draw inspiration from a wide array of sources, both personal and literary. The title character of "The Old Man in the Piazza," for example, was inspired by a fleeting scene from the original Pink Panther movie: an elderly man, unperturbed, stands as a wild car chase unfolds around him. Another novella, "Oklahoma," was sparked by Rushdie’s encounter with an exhibit of Franz Kafka’s papers, including the manuscript of Amerika, Kafka’s unfinished novel about a European immigrant’s journey in the United States. The story, dense with references to Kafka, Schiller, and Italo Calvino, becomes, in Rushdie’s hands, "a metaphor of hope and of fulfillment." As he explained, "According to (Kafka's friend and literary executor) Max Brod, Kafka had this idea that when his character arrived in Oklahoma, he would find some kind of happiness. He would find some kind of resolution, some kind of fulfillment there. And I often thought the idea of a Kafka book with a happy ending is kind of hard to imagine, so maybe it’s just as well he didn’t write the last chapter."
Another story, "Late," took an unexpected turn for Rushdie. Originally conceived as a straightforward narrative about a student’s bond with a Cambridge don—a character inspired by E.M. Forster and Alan Turing—the story veered into the supernatural. "I had initially thought that I would have this friendship, this improbable friendship between the young student and this grand old man," Rushdie said. "And then I sat down to write it, and the sentence I found on my laptop was, ‘When he woke up that morning, he was dead.’ And I thought, ‘What’s that?’" That sentence, which Rushdie doesn’t even remember writing, led him to write his first ghost story.
Despite the trauma he endured, Rushdie has returned to public life with a renewed sense of purpose. As of November 2025, he has planned appearances from Manhattan to San Francisco, a testament to his resilience and his enduring connection to readers. He lives in New York with his wife, the poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths, and continues to reflect on his legacy. In an interview with the AP, he mused, "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're an artist, you have the added question of will your work survive?" For Rushdie, the continued popularity of his 1981 Booker Prize-winning novel, Midnight’s Children, is its own reward: "That feels like a prize in itself."
Rushdie’s career has never been free from controversy. His most infamous work, The Satanic Verses, published in 1988, led to allegations of blasphemy and, in 1989, a fatwa from Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini calling for his death. The decree forced Rushdie into hiding for years, and although Iran announced in the late 1990s that it would no longer enforce the fatwa, the threat lingered. The 2022 attack was a grim reminder of those dangers. The assailant, Hadi Matar—who was not even born when The Satanic Verses was published—was found guilty of manslaughter and attempted murder. In May 2025, Matar was sentenced to 25 years in prison, with a federal trial still pending.
Rushdie’s new stories do not shy away from these themes of danger, legacy, and the passage of time. In "The Musician of Kahani," he revisits the world of Midnight’s Children many years later, blending magical realism with the story of a child-prodigy pianist who "grows strikingly tall at an early age"—as if her body knows she must reach the pedals. The stories, as Alpern notes, are concerned with what it means to die, to endure, and, ultimately, to hope.
Yet, for all these weighty themes, Rushdie’s sense of joy in returning to fiction is palpable. "No, it just feels like I’m so glad to have it back. I hope that people reading the book feel a certain kind of joy in it because I certainly felt joyful writing it," he told the AP. His approach to storytelling remains as inquisitive and outward-looking as ever. "I like being in the world," he said, pushing back against the notion that he is reclusive. He encourages writers to look beyond themselves: "Write what you know, but only if what you know is really interesting. And otherwise go find something out, write about that."
Despite his brush with mortality, Rushdie remains steadfast in his skepticism. Asked if the experience made him more spiritual, he replied, "I’m afraid it hasn’t. It has not performed that service." He added, with a touch of humor, "Hitch and myself are still united in that zone of disbelief, aggressive disbelief," referencing his late friend Christopher Hitchens.
With The Eleventh Hour, Rushdie demonstrates that the imagination, once awakened, is a force capable of transcending even the darkest of times. His stories—haunted by mortality, yet alive with invention—remind readers of the enduring power of fiction and the resilience of the human spirit.
