Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
Ratings9
Average rating3.8
15
Ratings9
Average rating3.8
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Harper’s 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 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. Praise for Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights “Rushdie is our Scheherazade. . . . This book is a fantasy, a fairytale—and a brilliant reflection of and serious meditation on the choices and agonies of our life in this world.”—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Guardian “One of the major literary voices of our time . . . In reading this new book, one cannot escape the feeling that [Rushdie’s] years of writing and success have perhaps been preparation for this moment, for the creation of this tremendously inventive and timely novel.”—San Francisco Chronicle “A 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.”—USA Today “A 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.”—The Washington Post “Great 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.”—The Boston Globe
Reviews with the most likes.
The usual delightful richness from Rushdie. His books always make me think of the little threads that connect us to one another - reminding me of the size of the world.
It was both a terrifying and hopeful book to read in the age of Trump - though it was obviously written before this year it resonates well.
Except in this case we have 1,404 days to go. Three years, 10 months and three days by my reckoning. Watch for flying urns until then...
This story is written in a style very unlike most modern novels, and that can make it quite a challenging read. For me however, it was well worth the effort. Rushdie is as creative and spell-binding as ever, and classic to his reputation, he will make you look at religion and society from a perspective you have never thought of before.
That said, I should add a disclaimer: This book is not for everybody! My book club read this book and most found the writing style – specifically his run-on sentences and erratic tangents in the story – difficult to get over. Some even felt that it ruined any merit the story had. I thought it added character to the story and gave it the feel similar to the medieval book 1001 Nights, which this book was paying tribute to, but even so it can be irritating to the modern reader. For me however, the challenging style just made the read more rewarding, because it forced me to focus on everything that was written (this book is not skimmable).
If you enjoy books with a philosophical focus, you are likely to really like this book. If you also like stories where Fantasy intersects with everyday life or if you like unlikely heroes, then you will love this book. Above all, if you like books that really challenge the way you see the world, you will get a lot out of this book.
