Description: After the publication of MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN in 1980. Salman Rushdie was awarded the Booker Prize and hailed as the voice of contemporary India. A dense interweaving of narratives, cultures, and voices, Midnight's Children chronicles modern India through the lives of the one thousand and one children born within the country's first hour of independence on August 15, 1947. The protagonist-narrator, Saleem Sinai -- born at the stroke of midnight, the precise moment of India's nationhood -- is celebrated in the press and welcomed by Prime Minister Nehru himself. The coincidence of his birth endows him with telepathic powers that connect him with the other one thousand midnight children, who also possess magical talents. Inextricably linked to his nation, Saleem's story is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirror the course of modern India.

Ebullient, operatic, comic, and serious, this novel is a wild, astonishing evocation of the maturity of a vast and complicated land and its people. It is also a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy.

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