Midnight’s Children

Midnight’s Children is a novel by Salman Rushdie. It deals with India’s change from British rule to independence and touches upon the themes of the partition of British India.

Summary of the Book

Saleem Sinai is born at Midnight, on India’s first Independence day. He has telepathic powers, and soon discovers that all children born at midnight have similar powers. Saleem assembles a Midnight Children’s Conference to reflect on the issues India faced in its early statehood. As a telepathic conduit, Saleem brings hundreds of geographically disparate children into contact and discovers their gifts. The magical realism in the novel examines liberalism and recalls indigenous Indian culture. It runs headlong into the moment of the emergency and shows how the children deal with the episode.

About Salman Rushdie

Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is an Indian British novelist best known for writing: the Satanic Verses, The Moor’s Last Sigh, The Enchantress of Florence, and The Ground Beneath Her Feet.

Rushdie was appointed Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France and knighted for services to literature in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. He has also won the Booker Prize for Fiction, Booker of Bookers, The Best of the Booker, Whitbread Novel Award, and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award for Children’s Fiction.