The Eleventh Hour by Salman Rushdie audiobook review – stories with levity and laughter

The author explores themes of legacy, mortality and loneliness in the first work of fiction since his near-fatal attack Five short stories and five readers make up Salman Rushdie’s collection, The Eleventh Hour, his first work of fiction since the near-fatal attack in 2022 where he sustained life-changing injuries.

These tales find the author exploring legacy, mortality, loneliness and the ageing process. In these potentially bleak themes, Rushdie finds levity and laughter, as well as profundity. Late, read by the actor Naveen Andrews, is a ghost story set in King’s College, Cambridge, where an honorary fellow, SM Arthur, wakes up dead in his college room and wonders if he will be trapped there for eternity. He meets a lonely but very…