First edition
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Author | Salman Rushdie |
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Cover artist | Bill Botten |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Genre | Magic Realism; Historiographic metafiction |
Publisher | Jonathan Cape |
Publication date
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1981 |
Media type | Print (hardback and paperback) |
Pages | 446 |
ISBN | |
OCLC | 8234329 |
Midnight's Children is a 1981 novel by Salman Rushdie that deals with India's transition from British colonialism to independence and the partition of British India. It is considered an example of postcolonial literature and magical realism. The story is told by its chief protagonist, Saleem Sinai, and is set in the context of actual historical events as with historical fiction. But, his style of preserving the history with fictional accounts was Self-reflexive which he himself explained with a term Chutnification. The frequent Intertextuality between his story-line and Bollywood films also gives it a flavor of a Pastiche. Therefore, this novel is also an example of Postmodern literature.
Midnight's Children won both the Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1981. It was awarded the "Booker of Bookers" Prize and the best all-time prize winners in 1993 and 2008 to celebrate the Booker Prize 25th and 40th anniversary. In 2003, the novel was listed on the BBC's survey The Big Read. It was also added to the list of Great Books of the 20th Century, published by Penguin Books.
The novel has a multitude of named characters; see the List of Midnight's Children characters.