We just talked live with the novelist, essayist, and memoirist Salman Rushdie, about his new collection of short stories, The Eleventh Hour — his first work of fiction since his recovery from the 2022 attack that nearly killed him — and about freedom of expression, the future of the book, authoritarianism, and more. We talked about:
The irreverent, questioning spirit and its enemies
How billionaires became the new threat to free speech
Why Donald Trump would be so hard to write as a literary character
Why his near-death experience didn’t turn him spiritual
How he still shows up every day and writes — and why his work is more about listening than inventing
Why books remain the most sophisticated information technology, with the power to change the world but only slowly and in secret
You won’t want to miss any of it. Just click on the video player above to watch the entire conversation.
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Join us more Live conversations this week!
Come back tomorrow, Wednesday, December 17, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, we’ll talk to journalist and author Andrew Ross Sorkin about 1929, his new book on the market crash that triggered the Great Depression, and its lessons for today. And then on Friday, December 19, also at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, The Ink Book Club will meet to discuss Kiran Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny and to talk about the best books of 2025.
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