Penguin Verlag Announces German Edition Of Salman Rushdie’s ‘The Eleventh Hour’
Once again, Penguin Random House will publish Rushdie’s new book in Germany, too.
“The Eleventh Hour” is the title of a new work by acclaimed Indian-British author Salman Rushdie, whose release across the English-speaking world was announced by Penguin Random House in April. It has now been confirmed that Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe in Munich will once again publish the German-language edition of the author’s latest work, titled “Die elfte Stunde.” The English original will be released on November 4 in the U.S. by Random House, in Canada by Knopf Canada, in the U.K. by Jonathan Cape, and in India by Hamish Hamilton. The German-language edition from Penguin Verlag will follow one week later.
Five New Stories
“The Eleventh Hour” is a collection of five new short stories and novellas, and marks Rushdie’s first work of fiction since the knife attack on him on August 12, 2022. Two years later, Penguin Random House published Rushdie’s memoir Knife worldwide, in which he reflects on the attack and its aftermath. The stories in “The Eleventh Hour” are set in India, the U.K., and the U.S. — the three countries that have shaped Rushdie’s life. At the heart of these tales lies a question that eventually faces us all: How do we come to terms with entering the eleventh hour — the final stage of life?
The characters in Rushdie’s stories are unforgettable: two argumentative yet inseparable old men, a musician who uses her gift to tear a family apart, the ghost of a professor bent on revenge against his tormentor. With insight and wisdom, Rushdie’s stories explore life’s greatest questions: Do we accept death or defy it? Is it anger or calm that defines our “eleventh hour”? And how do we find fulfillment when we cannot know the end of our own story?
‘Stories Are Connected’
“The three novellas in this volume, all written in the last 12 months, explore themes and places that have been much on my mind – mortality, Bombay, farewells, England – especially Cambridge, – anger, peace, America. And Goya and Kafka and Bosch as well,” Rushdie said upon the book’s announcement in April. “Though the stories differ greatly in setting, plot, and style, I’m pleased that they are nonetheless connected — with one another, and with the two shorter stories that serve as prologue and epilogue to the trio. I have come to think of the quintet as a single work, and I hope readers may see and enjoy it in the same way.”
Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay in 1947. At age 14, he moved to England and later studied history at Cambridge. He rose to international fame with his novel “Midnight’s Children,” which won the 1981 Booker Prize. In 1996, he was awarded the European Union’s Aristeion Prize for his body of work. In 2007, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him. In 2022, he was made an honorary member of the German PEN Center. In 2023, he received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.
