THE ELEVENTH HOUR

Rushdie turns his extraordinary imagination to lifes final act with a quintet of stories that span the three countries in which he has made his workIndia, England, and Americaand feature an unforgettable cast of characters. In the South introduces a pair of quarrelsome old menJunior and Seniorand their private tragedy at a moment of national calamity. In The Musician of Kahani, a musical prodigy from the Mumbai neighborhood featured in Midnights Children uses her magical gifts to wreak devastation on the wealthy family she marries into. In Late, the ghost of a Cambridge don enlists the help of a lonely student to enact revenge upon the tormentor of his lifetime. Oklahoma plunges a young writer into a web of deceit and lies as he tries to figure out whether his mentor killed himself or faked his own death. And The Old Man in the Piazza is a powerful parable for our times about freedom of speech. Do we accommodate ourselves to death, or rail against it? Do we spend our eleventh hour in serenity or in rage? And how do we achieve fulfillment with our lives if we dont know the end of our own stories? The Eleventh Hour probes life and death, legacy and identity, with wit, creativity, and keen insight.[Bokinfo].