Midnight's Children

Considered Salman Rushdie's masterpiece, MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN has become a part of the literary canon, drawing comparisons to ARABIAN NIGHTS for its multi-layered narrative, to Joyce's ULYSSES for its literary and linguistic inventiveness, to Marquez's ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE for its lush magical-realism, and Gunter Grass's THE TIN DRUM, for its ability to capture the history and zeitgeist of a nation. The novel is narrated by Saleem Sinai, a child born at the exact moment India gained independence in 1947, who discovers he has the telepathic ability to hear the thoughts of the one thousand and one other children born within the first hour of India's independence: the other "midnight's children." Mixing historical events and figures with witches, prophecy, and magic, the novel acts as an allegory for India's turbulent history, a coming-of-age tale, and an epic family saga. Hailed by TIME magazine as one of the hundred greatest novels in the English language, MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN won the Booker prize in 1981, and also won the "Best of the Booker" prize in both 1993 and 2008, proving its lasting power.