Review: The Eleventh Hour by Salman Rushdie

From my Substack:

Salman Rushdie is one of the world’s most prominent English language writers and certainly among the most famous writers of Indian origin. His second novel, Midnight’s Children won the 1981 Booker Prize as well as the “Best of the Bookers”. Other well-known novels include Shame–one of the great novels about Pakistan– and The Satanic Verses.

The Eleventh Hour is a collection of five stories, two of which were previously published in The New Yorker. For the purposes of this review, I will focus on “The Musician of Kahani” and “Late”.

“The Musician of Kahani” is set in the fictional city of Kahani (Urdu/Hindi for “story”) though the setting is clearly modeled on Bombay–where Rushdie was born and brought up. The story revolves around Chandni Contractor (the titular musician) who marries into a prominent business family. After she suffers a stillbirth while her in-laws are throwing party after party celebrating the arrival of the baby, Chandni decides to take revenge on them through her music. Rushdie describes the scene as follows:

The day came when Chandni’s fingers began to move once more in their particular fashion. She was back in her own room in her family’s residence in Breach Candy. She had not thought, since her return, of sitting at her piano or picking up her sitar–both of which had been quietly returned to her–but this time when her fingers moved Meena was in no doubt that she heard music. First Meena heard it, then Raheem. It was music of a kind they had never heard before, and the instruments on which it was being played were unknown to them, It rose above their home like a pillar of smoke, like a column of fire, like the weapon of an invading alien species, and then it rushed across the city and the country to do its deadly work… (Rushdie 96)

As a musician myself, I was particularly intrigued by the supernatural power of music in this story.

“Late” is set at Cambridge University in 1971. The story begins with the Honorary Fellow S.M. Arthur waking up and realizing he is dead. His ghost is seen by an Indian student called Rosa and Arthur eventually gets her to help him take revenge on those who tormented him in life.

The character of Arthur combines elements from the lives of E.M. Forster and Alan Turing. Like Forster, he wrote a famous novel set in India. Like Turing, he was involved in code breaking during World War II and–it is later revealed– had to undergo chemical castration because of his sexuality. The person responsible for forcing him to undergo this chemical castration was Lord Emmemm, the college provost, and it is Emmemm upon whom Arthur is determined to exact his revenge.

“Late” is an intriguing ghost story. It also evokes a time when homosexuals were persecuted in England.

Overall, I would recommend The Eleventh Hour to those who are fans of Salman Rushdie. While it is not among Rushdie’s strongest work, it is certainly an enjoyable reading experience.