Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights is a 2015 novel by British-Indian essayist and postcolonial novelist Salman Rushdie. A blend of magical realism and modern myth, it describes a near-future New York that is hit by a storm that opens a rift between the human world and the world of magical sprites, called jinns. A horde of evil jinns, led by Zumurrud, a Grand Ifrit, escapes through the rift and into the human world, wreaking havoc on humanity. In response, the Lightning Princess Dunia, a virtuous jinn leader, assembles her jinns to fight the Grand Ifrits and save humanity. This traditional story of good and evil coincides with a debate on the existence and intent of God between two famous philosophers: the religious Persian Muslim Al-Ghazali, and the more rationalist and Aristotelian Spanish Muslim thinker, Ibn Rushd. The book’s title refers to the duration of the War of the Worlds, 1001 nights.

The beginning of the novel explains how the War of the Worlds begins. The Lightning Princess, Dunia, keenly interested in human life, opens a passage into their world after falling in love with the Spanish philosopher Ibn Rushd. They give birth to many children called the Duniazat, whose signature mark is their lack of earlobes. Dunia plans for them to spread throughout the world, and Ibn Rushd hopes for them to be spiritual leaders, philosophers, and intellectuals. However, she never reveals that she is the Lightning Princess. Like the Greek myth of Pandora, whose curiosity about the contents of a box unleashed chaos on the world, Dunia’s meddling in the human world opens the floodgates for evil jinns to terrorize humanity.

In the wake of the storm unleashed by Dunia, the story turns to Mr. Geronimo, a gardener and handyman who inexplicably starts to levitate. He does not know whether to interpret it as a portent or a natural phenomenon. An immigrant from Bombay, he grew up in a Catholic family, and married an American named Ella Elfenbein. While they were deeply in love, Ella was fatally struck by lightning on a clear day. Afterwards, the grieving Mr. Geronimo turned to nurturing his garden as a source of comfort and control. Meanwhile, the long-dead Ibn Rushd quarrels in the afterlife with Ghazali over the question of free will. Ghazali argues that God determines every individual’s fate, while Ibn Rushd holds that reason and science are tools that give us a chance to shape our own.



Various other enigmatic events occur in the city once the rift is open between worlds. During a dispute with her ex-boyfriend, a woman named Teresa Saca shoots lightning out of her hand, killing him. Babies begin to exhibit magical powers. A boy named Jimmy Kapoor witnesses a comic book figure come to life. Mr. Geronimo starts to hover higher and higher off the floor. In the background, Dunia summons the Duniazat to fight the dark jinns. When the Grand Ifrit Zumurrud crosses into the human world, the real battle begins. Zumurrud’s escape was the fault of Ghazali, who had released him from a bottle and directed him to make humans fearful so that they would remember the salvation of God.

Dunia visits Mr. Geronimo to expel the jinn that is possessing his body. When she meets him, he looks uncannily similar to Ibn Rushd. Dunia thus falls in love with Mr. Geronimo instead of his identical lover. She molds herself into human form, and calls herself Ella. Mr. Geronimo continues to levitate, and spreads the strange and unhelpful power to his neighbors like an infection. Eventually, he is evicted, and Dunia decides to take him away to the world of the jinn, Peristan. When they get there, they learn that King of Qâf, Dunia’s father, was poisoned by a strange Chinese artifact, and soon died. They examine the item, a sentient box that seems to contain an endless number of tragic stories. It entrances Dunia with its stories, just as it did to the King, but Mr. Geronimo saves Dunia before it emits its deadly scream.

Dunia resolves to avenge her father’s murder and put an end to the recurring terror of the Grand Ifrits. Under her command, Teresa kills the lower rank of jinn that have infested New York. Mr. Geronimo goes to the aid of other people who have been afflicted with levitation powers. Ironically, Zumurrud becomes inspired by Ghazali’s work, and becomes his follower. Dunia finishes off the remaining Ifrits. At the end of the novel, Dunia and Mr. Geronimo become philosophers, and collaborate on a book that teaches the virtues of reason, knowledge, generosity, and tolerance. The narrator relates that their work becomes ubiquitous in the near-future human society.