A storm changes everything, leaving behind a bit of strangeness. Ordinary folks suddenly find themselves endowed with unusual talents or skills. Little do they realize their heritage has led to this moment as each one affected by the strangeness is a descendent of the jinn. Their fates are going to play out in a battle of good versus evil.
Like the fabled tale, A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS, TWO YEARS EIGHT MONTHS AND TWENTY-EIGHT DAYS showcases tales within tales. The underlying philosophical questions fascinated me almost as much as the fairytale-like stories of the various descendants of Dunia, the Lightning Princess. Each tale is unique in its own way but I must admit a special fondness for the levitating gardener.
Any book by Salman Rushdie is not necessarily an easy book to read, but is always well worth the time spent absorbing his work. TWO YEARS EIGHT MONTHS AND TWENTY- EIGHT DAYS is no exception. Salman Rushdie sweeps us across time and space as he draws us further into his magical world. Some of his sentences are so beautifully written that I just wanted to savor them, sometimes rereading them simply to appreciate the beauty of the language.
I love the history of the jinn that Salman Rushdie gives us in TWO YEARS EIGHT MONTHS AND TWENTY-EIGHT DAYS! Salman Rushdie's exquisite use of language evokes the mystical world of the jinn in stunning fashion. If you haven't read a Salman Rushdie book, TWO YEARS EIGHT MONTHS AND TWENTY-EIGHT DAYS is an excellent place to start.
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
subβStan Lee creation. Abandoned at the mayorβs 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,
Duniaβs children and others will play a role in an epic
war
between light and dark spanning a thousand and one nights
βor
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 βwonder talesβ of the East,
Salman Rushdieβs novel is a masterpiece about the age-old
conflicts that remain in todayβs 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.
© 2003-2026