Salman Rushdie's 'La onzième heure' Published in French Translation

On June 11, 2026, Gallimard published the French translation of Salman Rushdie's 'La onzième heure' (original English title 'The Eleventh Hour', released November 2025). The collection comprises three novellas and two short stories set in India, England, and the United States. The title metaphorically references mortality, following Rushdie's near-fatal stabbing on August 12, 2022, which he recounted in 'Knife' (2024). The opening story, 'Dans le Sud', features two elderly neighbors in Chennai who share a terrace and a surname beginning with V; one dies after being hit by a scooter. 'La Musicienne de Kahani' returns to Bombay (Mumbai), where a woman named Chandni uses her sitar music to exact revenge on her wealthy in-laws. Rushdie draws inspiration from R.K. Narayan, Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka, and E.M. Forster. The collection includes a ghost story about a homosexual man seeking posthumous revenge, inspired by Forster's life. Rushdie, who studied at King's College, Cambridge, met Forster there in the 1970s. Translated by Gérard Meudal, the book runs 315 pages and costs €23.