For more than three decades, author Salman Rushdie has lived under threat. In 1989, a fatwa forced him into hiding. In 2022, he was stabbed more than a dozen times while speaking on stage—and nearly killed.

Less than two years later, he recounted the attack (and remarkable recovery) in his memoir Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder. Now, at seventy-eight, Rushdie returns to fiction with The Eleventh Hour, a collection of five interlinked stories that explore anger, peace, mortality, and legacy.

We begin with the inspirations behind the new quintet (8:00), Rushdie’s formative, bookish years in Bombay (13:00), and the tumultuous family life that shaped his early writing (21:00). Then, he reflects on his time at Cambridge (27:00), his stint as a copywriter (33:00), and the lightbulb moment that led to his breakout novel, Midnight’s Children (37:00).

On the back half, we discuss the fatwa (40:00) and book burning of The Satanic Verses (50:00), threats to free speech (54:00), and the slippery-slope of political censorship (58:00). We also talk about Rushdie’s recovery and return to the page (1:02:00), his meta Curb Your Enthusiasm appearance (1:05:00), and the lasting power of literature (1:15:00).

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