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  • Published: 10 September 2015
  • ISBN: 9781473523609
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • Length: 11 hr 26 min
  • Narrator: Robert G. Slade
  • RRP: $22.99
Categories:

Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights




This is an ambitious, powerful novel from one of the most important writers of our time

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 sub-Stan Lee creation. Abandoned at the mayor’s 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, Dunia’s children and others will play a role in an epic war between light and dark spanning a thousand and one nights - or 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 'wonder tales' of the East, Salman Rushdie’s novel is a masterpiece about the age-old conflicts that remain in today’s 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.

  • Published: 10 September 2015
  • ISBN: 9781473523609
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • Length: 11 hr 26 min
  • Narrator: Robert G. Slade
  • RRP: $22.99
Categories:

About the author

Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie is the author of fourteen previous novels, including Midnight's Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker), The Satanic Verses, and Quichotte (which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize). 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.

Also by Salman Rushdie

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Praise for Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

[The book] moves between gentle irony and moments of profound emotion. It is a riotous, exuberant and sometimes maddening celebration of the power of storytelling, and of the importance of education and culture.

Christina Patterson, Sunday Times

His usual seamless blend of the realistic and fantastic.

Travel Guide

Two Years, Eight Months & Twenty-Eight Nights blends Arabian myth, history and sci-fi into a whirlwind fable.

Good Housekeeping

I like to think how many readers are going to admire the courage of this book, revel in its fierce colours, its boisterousness, humour and tremendous pizzazz, and take delight in its generosity of spirit.

Ursula K Le Guin, Guardian

Rollicking, lyrical and very enjoyable tale.

Darragh McManus, Irish Independent

Great fun.

Fiona Maddocks, Guardian

A powerful indictment of religious violence.

Francesca Wade, Literary Review

Rushdie writes with a happy exuberance.

Allan Massie, Scotman

Sensational… it is unlike not only anything you may have read by Rushdie but by anyone anywhere.

Sathnam Sanghera, The Times

The dark delights that spring from his imagination in this novel have a spellbinding energy that has marked the greatest storytellers since the days for Scheherazade.

Erica Wagner, Observer

Fans should be satisfied and newcomers bemused, then enchanted, by the wordsmithery on show.

Manchester Evening News

Two Years, Eight Months And Twenty-Eight Nights blends Arabian myth, history and sci-fi into a whirlwind of a fable.

Joanne Finney, Good Housekeeping

A mesmerizing modern tale about worlds dangerously colliding, the monsters that are unleashed when reason recedes, and a beautiful testament to the power of love and humanity in chaotic times.

Kevin McGough, The Fix

A joyous, fractured fairytale with a cast of thousands and a darkly glittering heart.

Alex Preston, Observer

Will no doubt be read for generations to come.

Rohan Silva, Evening Standard

Salman Rushdie described a battle between Islamic jinn for a 21st-century Earth.

Tim Martin, Daily Telegraph

An energetic return to form pitting reason against religious zeal

Justine Jordan, Guardian

Magic realism squared […] the most madcap fun you’re likely to have in a book this year.

Olaf Tyaransen, Hot Press

I love, love, love the Rushdie – I think it’s my favourite of his… The fantasy elements are just magical and, of course, it’s gorgeously written.

Marianne Faithfull, Observer

An apocalyptic battle between reason and unreason, good and evil, light and darkness, with all the bells and whistles of a Hollywood blockbuster.

Carlos Fraenkel, London Review of Books

Not only a beautifully written satire-as-fairytale but the subject matter is bang on trend… That Rushdie should still be writing so potently and still be continuing to push back the frontiers, when he could easily pull up a deck chair and languish on the frontiers he already owns is wonderful, inspirational and profoundly (but only in the best way) terrifying… 10/10, Master.

Starburst Magazine

Ambitious, smart and dark fable that is full of rich and profound notions about human nature.

Katherine McLaughlin, SciFi Now