Midnight's Children

The Man Booker Prize Winner 1981

About the Book: Midnight's Children

Born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, at the precise moment of India's independence, the infant Saleem Sinai is celebrated in the press and welcomed by Prime Minister Nehru himself. But this coincidence of birth has consequences Saleem is not prepared for: telepathic powers that connect him with 1,000 other"midnight's children"-all born in the initial hour of India's independence-and an uncanny sense of smell that allows him to sniff out dangers others can't perceive. Inextricably linked to his nations, Saleem's biography is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirror the course of modern India at its most impossible and glorious.

About the Author: Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay in June 1947. His second novel, the acclaimed Midnight's Children, was published in 1981. It won the Booker Prize for Fiction, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction), an Arts Council Writers' Award and the English-Speaking Union Award, and in 1993 was judged to have been the 'Booker of Bookers', the best novel to have won the Booker Prize for Fiction in the award's 25-year history. His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), lead to the Iranian leadership issuing a fatwa against him. Despite the fatwa the novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Whitbread Novel Award in 1988. Salman Rushdie was also nominated for the Man Booker International Prize in 2007. Salman Rushdie became a KBE in 2007.