Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children
Join us for Tuesday Night Book Club! Hosted by Monmouth University’s Ken Womack, each month we’ll explore a different novel. All you have to do is Zoom in and join the discussion! This week’s book is Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie.
Sir Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British-American novelist known for blending magic realism with historical fiction, often exploring East-West cultural themes. His acclaimed novel Midnight’s Children (1981) won the Booker Prize and was twice named the best of all Booker winners. His 1988 novel The Satanic Verses led to global controversy, a fatwa calling for his death, and multiple violent attacks, including a 2022 stabbing in New York.
Rushdie has received numerous honors, including a knighthood in 2007 and election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has lived in the U.S. since 2000 and taught at NYU and Emory. His 2012 memoir Joseph Anton recounts life under threat. In 2023, Time named him one of the world’s 100 most influential people.
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.
