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Returning to ALOUD after receiving the 2012 Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award for his distinguished commitment to libraries and literature, Rushdie shares his newest work of fiction. Inspired by the traditional "wonder tales" of the East and set in a strange near-future New York City, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights blends history, mythology, and a timeless love story. Satirical and bawdy, full of cunning and folly, kismet and karma, rapture and redemption, Rushdie’s novel is a masterpiece about the age-old conflicts that remain in today’s world. Discussing this work with Héctor Tobar, one of L.A.’s most respected voices, Rushdie takes the stage for a magical evening of storytelling.
Salman Rushdie is the author of twelve novels— including Midnight’s Children (Booker Prize, Best of the Booker), The Satanic Verses, and Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights—and one collection of short stories: East, West. He has also published nonfiction: Joseph Anton, The Jaguar Smile, Imaginary Homelands, and Step Across This Line, and co-edited the anthologies Mirrorwork and Best American Short Stories 2008. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. A former president of American PEN, Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature.
Héctor Tobar is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and a novelist. He is the author of The Barbarian Nurseries, Translation Nation, The Tattooed Soldier, and most recently, his book on the Chilean Miners, Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free. The son of Guatemalan immigrants, he is a native of Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife and three children.
