Midnight's Children [Paperback]

Before Salman Rushdie had that problem with a certain religious-political figure with a serious need to chill out, he'd already shown he was an important literary force. Quite simply, Midnight's Children is amazing--fun, beautiful, erudite, both fairy tale and political narrative told through a supernatural narrator who is caught between different worlds. Though it's a big book, with big themes of India's nationhood and of ethnic and personal identity, it's far from a dry history lesson. Rushdie tells the story in his own brand of magical realism, with a prose of lyrical, transcendent goofiness.

" Extraordinary . . . one of the most important [novels] to come out of the English-speaking world in this generation."
- The New York Review of Books
" The literary map of India is about to be redrawn. . . . Midnight's Children sounds like a continent finding its voice."
- The New York Times
" In Salman Rushdie, India has produced a glittering novelist- one with startling imaginative and intellectual resources, a master of perpetual storytelling."
- The New Yorker
" A marvelous epic . . . Rushdie's prose snaps into playback and flash-forward . . . stopping on images, vistas, and characters of unforgettable presence. Their range is as rich as India herself."
- Newsweek
" Burgeons with life, with exuberance and fantasy . . . Rushdie is a writer of courage, impressive strength, and sheer stylistic brilliance."
- The Washington Post Book World
" Pure story- an ebullient, wildly clowning, satirical, descriptively witty charge of energy."
- Chicago Sun-Times

'a masterpiece of post-colonial literature'

'India has produced a great novelist...a master of perpetual storytelling' V.S. Pritchett, New Yorker

Saleem Sinai was born at midnight, the midnight of India's independence, and found himself mysteriously 'handcuffed to history' by the coincidence. He is one of 1,001 children born at the midnight hour, each of them endowed with an extraordinary talent - and whose privilege and curse it is to be both master and victims of their times. Through Saleem's gifts - inner ear and wildly sensitive sense of smell - we are drawn into a fascinating family saga set against the vast, colourful background of the India of the 20th century.

'India has produced a great novelist...a master of perpetual storytelling' V.S. Pritchett, New Yorker

'One of the most important books to come out of the English-speaking world in this generation' New York Review of Books

WINNER OF THE BOOKER OF BOOKERS

Born at the stroke of midnight at the exact moment of India's independence, Saleem Sinai is a special child. However, this coincidence of birth has consequences he is not prepared for: telepathic powers connect him with 1,000 other 'midnight's children' all of whom are endowed with unusual gifts. Inextricably linked to his nation, Saleem's story is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirrors the course of modern India at its most impossible and glorious.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Salman Rushdie is the author of eight novels, one collection of short stories, and four works of non-fiction, and the co-editor of The Vintage Book of Indian Writing. In 1993 Midnight's Children was judged to be the 'Booker of Bookers', the best novel to have won the Booker Prize in its first 25 years. The Moor's Last Sigh won the Whitbread Prize in 1995, and the European Union's Aristeion Prize for Literature in 1996. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres. (19941121)