Intelligence Squared Salman Rushdie on Mortality, Memory and The Eleventh Hour
Nov 5, 2025
Salman Rushdie, the award-winning novelist celebrated for his works like Midnight's Children, discusses his new short story collection, The Eleventh Hour, with journalist Kavita Puri. He shares insights on mortality and memory, emphasizing the impact of his diverse homes—India, England, and America. Rushdie reflects on the dangers of rising nationalism and censorship, highlighting the essential role of free speech and literature in society. He also reveals his writing journey, shifting from meticulous planning to spontaneous storytelling.
42:57
Writing As Discovery
- Salman Rushdie treats writing as discovery, letting stories reveal themselves during the process.
- He shifted from strict planning to a day-by-day discovery method when composing fiction.
A Story That Chose Its Form
- Rushdie began a story whose first sentence had the protagonist die, surprising him and shaping the piece as a ghost story.
- That 70-page piece felt too long for a short story and too short for a novel, so he set it aside.
Goodbye To A Productive Alleyway
- Rushdie revisits Bombay in fiction as a way of saying goodbye to places he no longer expects to write about.
- He feels certain neighborhoods can sustain a lifetime of work but believes he's finished with that particular lane.
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Intro
00:00 • 2min
Rushdie Returns to Fiction After Knife
01:45 • 2min
Why This Collection Became Short Stories
03:52 • 1min
Rushdie's Shift from Planner to Discovery Writing
05:04 • 59sec
Mortality and Memory as a Thematic Thread
06:03 • 1min
Saying Goodbye to Bombay in Fiction
07:04 • 3min
Nostalgia, Cosmopolitan Bombay, and Change
09:55 • 1min
Exile, Perspective, and Writing about Place
10:59 • 4min
Geography of the Stories: India, England, America
14:32 • 41sec
Rising Nationalism and Youth Turning Right
15:13 • 1min
Stories as Timeless Yet Contemporary
16:28 • 3min
When Words Fail in Crisis
19:18 • 1min
Literature's Role Amid Closed Minds
20:44 • 3min
Language as a Character and Barthelby Influence
23:43 • 1min
The Piazza as a Metaphor for Democratic Discourse
25:10 • 4min
Free Speech Threats and Book Bans in America
29:10 • 13sec
Sensitivity Readers and the Death of Art
29:23 • 4min
Freedom vs. Goodness and Social Tension
33:22 • 3min
Friendship, Loss, and the End of a Generation
36:22 • 3min
Autobiography vs. Perspective in Fiction
39:21 • 28sec
Writing Short Fiction Again and the Novella Form
39:48 • 1min
Words May Fail but Writing Continues
40:50 • 14sec
Outro
41:04 • 21sec
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Salman Rushdie is one of the world’s most acclaimed, award-winning contemporary authors.
Translated into over forty languages, his sixteen works of fiction include Midnight’s Children – for which he won the Booker Prize in 1981, the Booker of Bookers on the 25th anniversary of the prize and Best of the Booker on the 40th anniversary – Shame, The Satanic Verses, Quichotte and Victory City. His latest non-fiction book, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder was a number one Sunday Times bestseller. A former president of PEN American Center, Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature and was made a Companion of Honour in the Queen's last Birthday Honours list in 2022.
In this episode, Rushdie sits down with broadcaster and journalist Kavita Puri to discuss his reflections on legacy, mortality, and returning to fiction in his new short story collection The Eleventh Hour.
The stories in The Eleventh Hour span the three countries that Rushdie has called home – India, England and America – and explore what it means to approach the eleventh hour of life.
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