Midnight's Children

Saleem Sinai was born at midnight, the midnight of India's independence, and found himself mysteriously 'handcuffed to history' by the coincidence. He is one of 1,001 children born at that midnight hour, each of them endowed with an extraordinary talent — and whose privilege and curse it is to be both masters and victims of their times.

'I have been a swallower of lives,' Saleem proclaims, 'And to understand me you'll have to swallow the lot.' The consumed multitudes come pouring out, his physician grandfather who fell in love with his grandmother through a perforated bed sheet and whose family would throw in their lot with India but retain their blue Kashmiri eyes; the parents who moved into a luxurious Bombay estate, entering into a curious bargain with a departing Englishman, and waited expectantly through Mountbatten's countdown for two nations and a son to be catapulted into the world; Saleem's ayah, Mary Pereira, who guards a terrible secret and can stir emotions into green chutney; Saleem's sister, 'the Brass Monkey', childishly setting fire to shoes while Nasser sinks ships, whose singing will inflame the Pakistani nation and arouse the impure love of a brother.

We see Saleem approach his tenth birthday with nothing but trouble outside his head and nothing but miracles in it. While language marchers fight over Bombay, this nine-year-old is developing an extraordinary gift — an inner ear which gives him access to the private thoughts and public affairs of India. Saleem leaps into the heads of film stars, cricketers, Nehru — and makes contact with the other midnight children. Once this precocious talent has been knocked out of him, Saleem acquires a wildly sensitive sense of smell, one so acute it can catch the whiff of hypocrisy, or despotism, or forbidden love, and will one day be exploited by special units to sniff out Sheikh Mujib in Bangladesh while 10 million refugees stream over its borders.

Salman Rushdie's rich tableau, which holds a fascinating family saga against the vast, colourful background of India in this century, is a masterly achievement. No event — political or personal, momentous or diverting — is without its almost musical reverberations within Rushdie's magnificent scheme. Saleem's narration seduces the imagination with its potent images, with its drama and wit and with the irresistible force of history.