Salman Rushdie has earlobes, even if genies in his new book don't After memorable experiences here, author returns to discuss latest work in which city has cameo Photo of Kyrie O’Connor Kyrie O’Connor Nov. 6, 2015 More Comments Print 15 1 of 15CHELTENHAM, ENGLAND - OCTOBER 10: Salman Rushdie, writer, at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on October 10, 2015 in Cheltenham, England. (Photo by David Levenson/Getty Images)Photo: David Levenson, Contributor 2 of 15CHELTENHAM, ENGLAND - OCTOBER 10: Salman Rushdie, writer, at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on October 10, 2015 in Cheltenham, England. (Photo by David Levenson/Getty Images)Photo: David Levenson, Contributor 3 of 15CHELTENHAM, ENGLAND - OCTOBER 10: Salman Rushdie, writer, at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on October 10, 2015 in Cheltenham, England. (Photo by David Levenson/Getty Images)Photo: David Levenson, Getty Images 4 of 15FRANKFURT AM MAIN, GERMANY - OCTOBER 13: Author Salman Rushdie attends the press conference of the 2015 Frankfurt Book Fair (Frankfurter Buchmesse) on October 13, 2015 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The fair, which is among the world's largest book fairs, will be open to the public from October 13-18. (Photo by Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images)Photo: Thomas Lohnes, Stringer 5 of 15Author Salman Rushdie delivers the keynote address to the crowd at the Flair Symposium at the Harry Ransom Center last fall, on the occasion of the opening of the Gabriel Garcé­a Mé¡rquez archive.Photo: Ilana Panich-Linsman 6 of 15Salman Rushdie address the crowd at the Flair Symposium last fall, on the occasion of the opening of the Gabriel Garcé­a Mé¡rquez archive at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.Photo: Ilana Panich-Linsman 7 of 15AUSTIN, TEXAS - October 28, 2015: Salman Rushdie delivers the keynote address to the crowd at the Twelfth Biennial Flair Symposium, on the occasion of the opening of the Gabriel Garcé­a Mé¡rquez archive. Ilana Panich-Linsman for The Houston ChroniclePhoto: Ilana Panich-Linsman 8 of 15AUSTIN, TEXAS - October 28, 2015: Family of Gabriel Garcé­a Mé¡rquez, including his wife Mercedes Barcha and son Rodrigo Garcia Barcha, listen to Salman Rushdie's keynote address during the Twelfth Biennial Flair Symposium, on the occasion of the opening of the Gabriel Garcé­a Mé¡rquez archive. Ilana Panich-Linsman for The Houston Photo: Ilana Panich-Linsman 9 of 15"No pressure," Salman Rushdie says sarcastically of speaking before author Gabriel García Márquez's family, including widow Mercedes Barcha and son Rodrigo García Barcha, center, at the opening of García Márquez's archive at the University of Texas at Austin.Photo: Ilana Panich-Linsman 10 of 15Salman Rushdie delivers the keynote address to the crowd at the Flair Symposium in October, on the occasion of the opening of the Gabriel Garcé­a Mé¡rquez archive at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.Photo: Ilana Panich-Linsman 11 of 15Salman Rushdie delivered the keynote address at the opening of the archive. The Booker Prize-winning author then mingled with fans, even posing for selfies.Photo: Ilana Panich-Linsman 12 of 15Author Salman Rushdie delivers the keynote address to the crowd at the twelfth biennial Flair Symposium, on the occasion of the opening of the Gabriel Garcé­a Mé¡rquez archive at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.Photo: Ilana Panich-Linsman 13 of 15AUSTIN, TEXAS - October 28, 2015: Salman Rushdie visits with people at the reception of the Twelfth Biennial Flair Symposium, on the occasion of the opening of the Gabriel Garcé­a Mé¡rquez archive. Ilana Panich-Linsman for The Houston ChroniclePhoto: Ilana Panich-Linsman 14 of 15"Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights" by Salman Rushdie. 15 of 15

Salman Rushdie, who will speak Monday in Houston to a sold-out house as part of Inprint's reading series, has a strange and bittersweet relationship with Houston.

On Sept. 10, 2001, the Booker Prize-winning novelist spoke at another Inprint event and planned to fly out in the morning, the official publication date of his novel "Fury." But when planes hit the World Trade Center and Pentagon, he couldn't leave Houston.

"The Inprint folks took care of me," Rushdie says now. The literary nonprofit found him a place to stay, the home of poet Edward Hirsch, who was stuck in Washington, D.C.

Unlimited Digital Access for 99¢ Read more articles like this by subscribing to the Houston Chronicle

SUBSCRIBE

Rushdie fed Hirsch's dog and found solace at the Menil Collection and Rothko Chapel. "It was a strange beginning," he says, of his relationship with Houston. More Information 'Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights'

By Salman Rushdie.

Random House, 304 pp., $28. Read More

Nearly 10 years later, Rushdie found himself in Houston, again at a poignant time. His dear friend, the writer and outspoken atheist Christopher Hitchens, was dying of esophageal cancer at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. "We had one last birthday while he was still well enough to leave the hospital," Rushdie says. "Now I have a large, Christopher Hitchens-size hole in my heart."

Rushdie's Monday-night visit should be less solemn.

He'll talk about his latest novel, "Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights" (think: 1,001 nights), a swirling, jam-packed, fantastical salmagundi. The phrase "laugh-out-loud funny" is overworked but entirely applicable here.

The book passes through many centuries, beginning with the love between a fictionalized version of the real medieval Andalusian philosopher Ibn Rushd and a female jinni (genie) named Dunia, who has slipped through a slit between her world and this one. The romance lasts 1,001 nights and produces, miraculously, dozens of children.

Hundreds of years later - in our time - Dunia returns to gather up her descendants, none of whom have earlobes, to fight four evil jinn who also have entered our already-too-crazy world and created even more havoc than humans. One swallows the Staten Island ferry.

Houston also makes a cameo: A curator at the Menil offers an insight into what's going on in a Magritte painting when real people start levitating.

Rushdie's family name derives from Ibn Rushd's, but the resemblance stops there.

"I have earlobes," he says. "It's not me. The idea of the earlobes was stolen from the Habsburg dynasty."

In its dense storytelling, reliance on myth and fairy tale, and over-the-topness, "Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights" is a unique story. "I think the book does take risks," he says. "I have taken it as far as it needs to go."

Many people have told Rushdie the book would make a perfect high-end TV series (with ample CGI). "Hollywood tends not to stampede toward my work," he says wryly, though he is up for the idea of TV and enjoyed writing the screenplay for his great novel "Midnight's Children."

The new novel is narrated from a millennium (or more probably 1,001 years) in our future, and it's not giving away too much to say that the future is not entirely happy.

"One of the great classic lessons of fairy tales is to be careful what you wish for," Rushdie says. "More than one friend has said, 'How can you stop there? You can't stop there.' "

Dreaming plays a key role in the novel, and Rushdie says his own dreams, when he's writing, tend to be exquisitely dull. "I'll dream I'm getting coffee or going for a walk."

That's led him to a theory. "I think writing taps into, in our waking lives, the part of the brain that does the dreaming."

This is Rushdie's second trip to Texas in just a few weeks. Most recently, he traveled to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin to speak at the opening of the archive of Nobel Prize-winning Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez. "The front row was entirely filled with his family," Rushdie says. "No pressure."

But he looks forward to the talk Monday. "It's always a little extra-touching to do an Inprint event. Wherever you were on 9/11, there is an odd, deep bond. In my case, it's them."