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Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

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Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

By: Salman Rushdie
Narrated by: Robert G Slade
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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.

Fantasy Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Magical Realism Satire Classics War Mythology
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Critic reviews

[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)
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)
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. (Darragh McManus)
A powerful indictment of religious violence. (Francesca Wade)
Great fun. (Fiona Maddocks)
Sensational… it is unlike not only anything you may have read by Rushdie but by anyone anywhere. (Sathnam Sanghera)
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)
Rushdie writes with a happy exuberance. (Allan Massie)
All stars
Most relevant

What did you like most about Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights?

I loved the way that Salman Rushie uses the format of a fantasy story in almost fable-like fashion to hold a mirror up to our world today.

What did you like best about this story?

Matching the fantasy to today's reality

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

As the story is quite complex and there are many characters with curious names, it is worth, if not listening in one scene, at least to listen as continuously as possible.

An oblique view of the world

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The love child of One hundred years of solitude and The Master and Margarita. Not my genre of preference, but a fun story well told.

if you like fairies

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I love fairy tales and magic and novels that deal with the difficult questions in life and with the even harder attempts at an answer. Here both kinds of novel are combined. A bit confusing at times, but with so many great passages that I had no trouble sticking with it.

Wonderful story!

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I couldn't finish this title. felt self indulgent the naration made it hard to get involved with the story

Not his best

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