Salman Rushdie turns his extraordinary imagination to life’s final act with a quintet of stories that span the three countries in which he has made his work: India, England and America. “In the South” introduces a pair of quarrelsome old men and their private tragedy at a moment of national calamity. In “The Musician of Kahani,” a musical prodigy from the Mumbai neighborhood featured in MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN uses her magical gifts to wreak devastation on the wealthy family she marries into. In “Late,” the ghost of a Cambridge don enlists the help of a lonely student to enact revenge upon the tormentor of his lifetime. “Oklahoma” plunges a young writer into a web of deceit and lies as he tries to figure out whether his mentor killed himself or faked his own death. And “The Old Man in the Piazza” is a powerful parable for our times about freedom of speech.