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Midnight's Children

Front Cover
762 Reviews
Random House Digital, Inc., Aug 26, 2010 - Fiction - 578 pages
Winner of the Booker of Bookers

Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,” all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts. 

This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Twenty-five years after its publication, Midnight’s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.
  

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5 stars
292
4 stars
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3 stars
68
2 stars
27
1 star
20

Very imaginative; excellent writing; - weRead
I was a little disappointed by the ending though - weRead
Brilliantly written, great characterisation. - weRead
A master of story telling. - weRead
The writing is exciting, complicated, funny and angry. - weRead
An educational experience for me. - weRead

Review: Midnight's Children

User Review  - David - Goodreads

Salman Rushdie's narrative tone in this book is jovial and humorous, even when he's describing pretty horrific things. It sneaks up on you that the first-person narrator, Saleem Sinai, is not just a ... Read full review

Review: Midnight's Children

User Review  - Steve - Goodreads

I truly am sorry, Salman. It's trite to say, I know, but it really wasn't you, it was me. I take all the blame for not connecting, ignorant as I am about the Indian subcontinent's history, culture ... Read full review

All 762 reviews »

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Contents

BOOK THREE
BOOK ONE
The Perforated Sheet
Mercurochrome
HittheSpittoon
Under the Carpet
A Public Announcement
Manyheaded Monsters
Alpha and Omega
The Kolynos Kid
Commander Sabarmatis Baton
Revelations
Movements Performed by Pepperpots
Drainage and the Desert
Jamila Singer
How Saleem Achieved Purity

Methwold
Tick Tock
BOOK TWO
The Fishermans Pointing Finger
Snakes and Ladders
Accident in a Washingchest
AllIndia Radio
Love in Bombay
My Tenth Birthday
At the Pioneer Café
BOOK THREE
The Buddha
In the Sundarbans
Sam and the Tiger
The Shadow of the Mosque
A Wedding
Midnight
Abracadabra
Copyright

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About the author (2010)

Salman Rushdie was born in 1947 and has lived in England since 1961. He is the author of six novels: Grimus, Midnight’s Children, which won the Booker Prize in 1981 and the James Tait Black Prize, Shame, winner of the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, The Satanic Verses, which won the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which won the Writers’ Guild Award and The Moor’s Last Sigh which won the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award. He has also published a collection of short stories East, West, a book of reportage The Jaguar Smile, a volume of essays Imaginary Homelands and a work of film criticism The Wizard of Oz. His most recent novel is The Ground Beneath Her Feet, which was published in 1999. 

Salman Rushdie was awarded Germany’s Author of the Year Award for his novel The Satanic Verses in 1989. In 1993, Midnight’s Children was voted the ‘Booker of Bookers’, the best novel to have won the Booker Prize in its first 25 years. In the same year, he was awarded the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. He is also Honorary Professor in the Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His books have been published in more than two dozen languages.

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