Novel
Midnight's Children
Salman Rushdie · 1981
Synopsis
Saleem Sinai is born in Bombay on 15 August 1947, at the first stroke of midnight, at the precise moment when India becomes independent. Like the thousand and one children born in that first hour, he is endowed with a power, and discovers that he can make contact with all the others. Going back to his grandfather, in Kashmir in 1915, he tells the saga of his family, each episode of which is bound up with the convulsions of India and Pakistan.
Context
The novel was conceived during the years when the author was working in advertising, and appeared in London from Jonathan Cape in 1981. Indira Gandhi, of whom the book draws a very dark portrait and whose forced sterilisation policy it attacks, brought a defamation action; the matter was settled out of court, the author agreeing to remove the offending sentence. The author himself adapted it for the stage, with Simon Reade and Tim Supple, for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Who it is for
A long novel, over six hundred pages in translation, with a digressive narration; some knowledge of India and Pakistan from 1947 to 1977 helps.
Prizes and reception
Booker Prize 1981; voted Booker of Bookers in 1993, then Best of the Booker in 2008 in a readers' vote.
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