NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ⢠NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post ⢠Los Angeles Times ⢠San Francisco Chronicle ⢠Harperâs Bazaar ⢠St. Louis Post-Dispatch ⢠The Guardian ⢠The Kansas City Star ⢠National Post ⢠BookPage ⢠Kirkus Reviews
From Salman Rushdie, one of the great writers of our time, comes a spellbinding work of fiction that blends history, mythology, and a timeless love story. A lush, richly layered novel in which our world has been plunged into an age of unreason, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights is a breathtaking achievement and an enduring testament to the power of storytelling.
In the near future, after a storm strikes New York City, the strangenesses begin. A down-to-earth gardener finds that his feet no longer touch the ground. A graphic novelist awakens in his bedroom to a mysterious entity that resembles his own subâStan Lee creation. Abandoned at the mayorâs office, a baby identifies corruption with her mere presence, marking the guilty with blemishes and boils. A seductive gold digger is soon tapped to combat forces beyond imagining.
Unbeknownst to them, they are all descended from the whimsical, capricious, wanton creatures known as the jinn, who live in a world separated from ours by a veil. Centuries ago, Dunia, a princess of the jinn, fell in love with a mortal man of reason. Together they produced an astonishing number of children, unaware of their fantastical powers, who spread across generations in the human world.
Once the line between worlds is breached on a grand scale, Duniaâs children and others will play a role in an epic war between light and dark spanning a thousand and one nightsâor two years, eight months, and twenty-eight nights. It is a time of enormous upheaval, in which beliefs are challenged, words act like poison, silence is a disease, and a noise may contain a hidden curse.
Inspired by the traditional âwonder talesâ of the East, Salman Rushdieâs novel is a masterpiece about the age-old conflicts that remain in todayâs world. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights is satirical and bawdy, full of cunning and folly, rivalries and betrayals, kismet and karma, rapture and redemption.
Praise for Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
âRushdie is our Scheherazade. . . . This book is a fantasy, a fairytaleâand a brilliant reflection of and serious meditation on the choices and agonies of our life in this world.ââUrsula K. Le Guin, The Guardian
âOne of the major literary voices of our time . . . In reading this new book, one cannot escape the feeling that [Rushdieâs] years of writing and success have perhaps been preparation for this moment, for the creation of this tremendously inventive and timely novel.ââSan Francisco Chronicle
âA wicked bit of satire . . . [Rushdie] riffs and expands on the tales of Scheherazade, another storyteller whose spinning of yarns was a matter of life and death.ââUSA Today
âA swirling tale of genies and geniuses [that] translates the bloody upheavals of our last few decades into the comic-book antics of warring jinn wielding bolts of fire, mystical transmutations and rhyming battle spells.ââThe Washington Post
âGreat fun . . . The novel shines brightest in the panache of its unfolding, the electric grace and nimble eloquence and extraordinary range and layering of his voice.ââThe Boston Globe
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights - Salman Rushdie
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ⢠NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post ⢠Los Angeles Times ⢠San Francisco Chronicle ⢠Harperâs Bazaar ⢠St. Louis Post-Dispatch ⢠The Guardian ⢠The Kansas City Star ⢠National Post ⢠BookPage ⢠Kirkus Reviews
From Salman Rushdie, one of the great writers of our time, comes a spellbinding work of fiction that blends history, mythology, and a timeless love story. A lush, richly layered novel in which our world has been plunged into an age of unreason, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights is a breathtaking achievement and an enduring testament to the power of storytelling.
In the near future, after a storm strikes New York City, the strangenesses begin. A down-to-earth gardener finds that his feet no longer touch the ground. A graphic novelist awakens in his bedroom to a mysterious entity that resembles his own subâStan Lee creation. Abandoned at the mayorâs office, a baby identifies corruption with her mere presence, marking the guilty with blemishes and boils. A seductive gold digger is soon tapped to combat forces beyond imagining.
Unbeknownst to them, they are all descended from the whimsical, capricious, wanton creatures known as the jinn, who live in a world separated from ours by a veil. Centuries ago, Dunia, a princess of the jinn, fell in love with a mortal man of reason. Together they produced an astonishing number of children, unaware of their fantastical powers, who spread across generations in the human world.
Once the line between worlds is breached on a grand scale, Duniaâs children and others will play a role in an epic war between light and dark spanning a thousand and one nightsâor two years, eight months, and twenty-eight nights. It is a time of enormous upheaval, in which beliefs are challenged, words act like poison, silence is a disease, and a noise may contain a hidden curse.
Inspired by the traditional âwonder talesâ of the East, Salman Rushdieâs novel is a masterpiece about the age-old conflicts that remain in todayâs world. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights is satirical and bawdy, full of cunning and folly, rivalries and betrayals, kismet and karma, rapture and redemption.
Praise for Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
âRushdie is our Scheherazade. . . . This book is a fantasy, a fairytaleâand a brilliant reflection of and serious meditation on the choices and agonies of our life in this world.ââUrsula K. Le Guin, The Guardian
âOne of the major literary voices of our time . . . In reading this new book, one cannot escape the feeling that [Rushdieâs] years of writing and success have perhaps been preparation for this moment, for the creation of this tremendously inventive and timely novel.ââSan Francisco Chronicle
âA wicked bit of satire . . . [Rushdie] riffs and expands on the tales of Scheherazade, another storyteller whose spinning of yarns was a matter of life and death.ââUSA Today
âA swirling tale of genies and geniuses [that] translates the bloody upheavals of our last few decades into the comic-book antics of warring jinn wielding bolts of fire, mystical transmutations and rhyming battle spells.ââThe Washington Post
âGreat fun . . . The novel shines brightest in the panache of its unfolding, the electric grace and nimble eloquence and extraordinary range and layering of his voice.ââThe Boston Globe