Novelist Salman Rushdie at ‘The Eleventh Hour’

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

Higher Ground

Tv & Film, Film Interviews, Society & Culture

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 2 November 2025

⏱️ 91 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For more than three decades, author Salman Rushdie has lived under threat. In 1989, a fatwa forced him into hiding. In 2022, he was stabbed more than a dozen times while speaking on stage—and nearly killed.

Less than two years later, he recounted the attack (and remarkable recovery) in his memoir Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder. Now, at seventy-eight, Rushdie returns to fiction with The Eleventh Hour, a collection of five interlinked stories that explore anger, peace, mortality, and legacy.

We begin with the inspirations behind the new quintet (5:52), Rushdie’s formative, bookish years in Bombay (14:20), and the tumultuous family life that shaped his early writing (21:20). Then, he reflects on his time at Cambridge (29:30), his stint as a copywriter (35:32), and the lightbulb moment that led to his breakout novel, Midnight’s Children (39:40).

On the back half, we discuss the fatwa (50:15) and book burning of The Satanic Verses (53:30), threats to free speech (56:36), and the slippery slope of political censorship (1:04:30). We also talk about Rushdie’s recovery and return to the page (1:14:10), his meta Curb Your Enthusiasm appearance (1:08:37), and the lasting power of literature (1:24:00).

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This message comes from FOSFeminista.
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0:22.1	Lemonada. Lemonada.
0:44.9	This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Forgo, so welcome to the show. Today, author Salman Rushdie.
1:01.0	He broke through in 1981 with Midnight's children, the Booker Prize-winning novel that reimagined India's independence through a blend of history, myth, and magical realism.
1:12.3	The novel established Rishdi as an exciting new voice in the world of literature.
1:17.1	He would then go on to write a series of other exceptional books, fiction and nonfiction alike,
1:23.0	including shame, Joseph Anton, Languages of Truth, and Victory City.
1:28.7	But Rushdie's story has never existed solely on the page.
1:32.5	On February 14, 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini, then the Supreme Leader of Iran, issued a fatwa
1:40.2	calling for his assassination.
1:42.5	The decree condemned his fourth novel, The satanic verses, as blasphemous,
1:48.2	forcing the renowned author into hiding for nearly a decade. Eventually, Rushdie found freedom again,
1:55.2	first in London, then in New York City, where for over 20 years he lived and worked freely, undimmed by the specter of
2:03.4	violence. That was until the morning of August 12, 2022, when a radicalized 24-year-old man attacked
2:10.7	Rochedy on stage at a literary festival in upstate New York. The assailant repeatedly stabbed
2:17.2	the author, causing him to lose sight in one eye
2:20.0	and the use of one of his hands and nearly killing him in the process. Less than two years later,
2:26.5	the celebrated author took to the page and recounted the attack and remarkable recovery
2:31.4	in a 2024 memoir entitled Knife, Meditations After an Attempted Murder.
	...

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