NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Harper’s Bazaar • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • The Guardian • The Kansas City Star • National Post • BookPage • Kirkus Reviews

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.


《紐約時報》暢銷書、《華盛頓郵報》、《洛杉磯時報》、《舊金山紀事報》、《哈潑時尚》、《聖路易斯郵訊報》、《衛報》、《堪薩斯星報》、《國家郵報》、《書頁雜誌》與《柯克斯書評》一致推薦的年度好書。

作者薩爾曼．魯西迪為當今最偉大的作家之一，他結合歷史、哲學以及永恆的愛情故事，創作出這本引人入勝的科幻作品。本書層次豐富，在書中，我們的世界陷入了非理性的時代。本書是精采絕倫之作，也證明說故事的力量歷久不衰。

在不久的未來，紐約市遭受風暴的侵襲，之後，各地開始出現怪異事件。做事腳踏實地的園丁發現自己的雙腳再也碰不到地面。一名圖像小說家醒來後，發現臥室裡有個神祕的物體，很像他創作的漫畫人物。一個被丟棄在市長辦公室的嬰兒，能察覺貪腐的官員，並在他們身上留下疤痕與瘡，。一位性感撩人的拜金女遭人利用來打擊意想不到的勢力。

但這些人並不知道，其實他們都是精靈的後裔，精靈是種古怪、任性又放蕩的生物，他們居住的世界與人界以薄紗分隔。幾百年以前，精靈世界的公主──杜尼亞，愛上一個理性的凡人。他們生育了很多孩子，卻沒發現孩子也都具有非比尋常的力量，而這些孩子也在人類世界裡歷代繁衍。

然而，兩個世界之間的界線遭到大規模的破壞，杜尼亞的孩子和其他人必須參與一場光明與黑暗之間的史詩大戰，歷時一千零一夜—也就是兩年、八個月，又二十八個夜晚。這是個極為動盪不安的時代，信仰遭受挑戰，文字的作用如同毒藥，沉默成了一種疾病，而噪音可能隱含詛咒。

作者薩爾曼．魯西迪受到東方傳統「神話故事」的啟發，寫的這本鉅作訴說現今仍有的古老衝突。本書寫作風格諷刺中帶點幽默，人物性格既狡猾又愚蠢、角色間的對立與背叛更是層出不窮、他們經歷天命與因果、也得到狂喜與救贖。