Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights: a novel - Hardcover

Rushdie, Salman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 191070203X ISBN 13: 9781910702031

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 2015

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review

"[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)

"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)

"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)

"Rollicking, lyrical and very enjoyable tale." (Darragh McManus Irish Independent)

"[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."

"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."

"His usual seamless blend of the realistic and fantastic."

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

"Rollicking, lyrical and very enjoyable tale."

From the Author

Sir Salman Rushdie has received many awards for his writing, including the European Union’s Aristeion Prize for Literature. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres. In 1993 Midnight’s Children was judged to be the ‘Booker of Bookers’, the best novel to have won the Booker Prize in its first 25 years. In June 2007 he received a knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.

About this edition

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 191070203X
• ISBN 13: 9781910702031
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304