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Reading guide: Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

Midnight's Children

A special edition of the booker-prize winning novel

'A wonderful, rich and humane novel... a classic' Guardian 
 
Born at the stroke of midnight at the exact moment of India's independence, Saleem Sinai is a special child. 
 
However, this coincidence of birth has consequences he is not prepared for: telepathic powers connect him with 1,000 other 'midnight's children' all of whom are endowed with unusual gifts. Inextricably linked to his nation, Saleem's story is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirrors the course of modern India at its most impossible and glorious. 
 
*WINNER OF THE BOOKER AND BEST OF THE BOOKER PRIZE* 
 
**A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BIG JUBILEE READ PICK** 
 
WITH A NEW 40TH ANNIVERSARY INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR

Totally different to anything I'd read before: hilarious at times, frustrating at times, exploring how history is linked into our lives, plus lots of metaphors about chutney

A wonderful, rich and humane novel that is safe to call a classic.

Midnight's Children is also full of such zest for every messy aspect of life that you can't help but feel inspired

Rushdie’s novel took a post-colonial “empire fights back” spirit, and a deep personal understanding of the politics of Indian partition, and exploded them into something teeming with imaginative life… He inhabits a hybrid consciousness, with a telepathic connection to the other children of midnight, and tells its stories for all he is worth.

The extraordinary alchemy of Midnight’s Children was its miraculous fusion of the fantastical and the historical.

A magical-realist reflection of the issues India faced post-independence including culture, language, religion, and politics… It’s a truly incredible work.

A head-spinning tale... Rushdie's masterpiece virtually invented a new language for Anglo-Indian literature

One of the most important books to come out of the English-speaking world in this generation

Salman Rushdie is one of the world’s most acclaimed, award-winning contemporary authors. Translated into over forty languages, his sixteen works of fiction include Midnight’s Children – for which he won the Booker Prize in 1981, the Booker of Bookers on the 25th anniversary of the prize and Best of the Booker on the 40th anniversary – Shame, The Satanic Verses, Quichotte and Victory City. His latest book, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder was a number one Sunday Times bestseller. A former president of PEN American Center, Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature and was made a Companion of Honour in the Queen's last Birthday Honours list in 2022.

The Moor's Last Sigh

‘Salman Rushdie's greatest novel’ Sunday Times 
 
Moraes ‘Moor’ Zogoiby is the last in line of a crooked and fantastical dynasty of spice merchants and crime lords from Cochin. He is also a compulsive storyteller and an exile. As we travel with him on a route that takes him from India to Spain, he spins his labyrinthine family tale of mad passions and volcanic family hatreds, of titanic matriarchs and their mesmerised offspring, of premature deaths and curses that strike beyond the grave. 
 
But does the India of his parents – populated by extravagant artists, piratical gatekeepers and mysterious lost paintings – still exist? And will he ever discover what became of his fiery and tempestuous mother? Moraes’ epic quest to uncover the truth of the past is a love story to a vanishing world, and also its last hurrah. 
 
**One of the BBC’s 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**

Shame

The novel that set the stage for his modern classic, The Satanic Verses, Shame is Salman Rushdie’s phantasmagoric epic 
 
Omar Khayyam Shakil had three mothers who shared everything. They shared the symptoms of pregnancy, they shared the son that they all claim to have borne on the same night. Raised at their six breasts, Omar's mothers teach him to live a life without shame. And it is training that proves very useful when he leaves his mothers’ fortress and makes the fateful mistake of falling in love. For he finds himself an unwitting player in an ongoing duel between the families of two men – one a celebrated wager of war, the other a debauched lover of pleasure – living in a world caught between honour and humiliation, where a moment of shame could prove fatal. 
 
‘Shame is every bit as good as Midnight's Children. It is a pitch-black comedy of public life and historical imperatives’ The Times

Grimus

The extraordinary literary debut of Salman Rushdie: ‘A firework of a book, funny and endlessly surprising’ Ursula Le Guin 
 
Flapping Eagle is a young Axona Indian gifted with immortal life after drinking an elixir from his wayward sister. But after 777 years of sailing the world’s seas, he becomes weary of life, and sets out to find the mystical Calf Island, a place where his fellow immortals have gathered and created their own version of the human race. 
 
But Calf Island is a strange place – like its inhabitants, it is both blessed and cursed. Sensing a terrible darkness at the heart of the island, Flapping Eagle sets out to scale the island’s peak and confront its mysterious and potent creator, Grimus himself. 
 
'A mixture of science fiction and folktale, past and future, primitive and present day... Grimus is a parallel form of life, and conjuring of an alternative society' Financial Times

The Satanic Verses

Discover Salman Rushdie’s critically acclaimed magical realist study of good and evil. 
 
'A masterpiece' Sunday Times 
 
Just before dawn one winter's morning, a plane blows apart high above the English Channel and two figures tumble, clutched in an embrace, towards the sea: Gibreel Farishta, India's legendary movie star, and Saladin Chamcha, the man of a thousand voices. 
 
Washed up, alive, on an English beach, their survival is a miracle. But there is a price to pay. Gibreel and Saladin have been chosen as opponents in the eternal wrestling match between Good and Evil. But chosen by whom? And which is which? And what will be the outcome of their final confrontation? 
 
'A great novelist, a master of perpetual storytelling' V.S. Pritchett

Meditations After an Attempted Murder

Knife

**Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2024** 
 
 A gripping account of survival and recovery from internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize-winner Salman Rushdie 
 ‘A masterpiece… Extraordinary’ Daily Telegraph‘A story of hatred defeated by love’ Guardian 
 
 On the morning of 12 August 2022, Salman Rushdie was sitting onstage in upstate New York, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black – black clothes, black mask – rushed down the aisle towards him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are. 
 
 What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey of healing and recovery. 
 
 This an intimate meditation on life, loss, love, art – and finding the strength to stand up again 
 
 A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE TIMES, GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, DAILY TELEGRAPH, SPECTATOR, INDEPENDENT, EVENING STANDARD, NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER AND TIME 
 ‘An incandescent book about love and hard-won survival’The Times 
 ‘Salman Rushdie is a genius… A brave book by a brave man’ 
 Evening Standard 
 ‘Gripping… It reminds us of the things worth fighting for’New York Times 
 No.1 Sunday Times bestseller, April 2024

It is an absolutely stunning piece of writing: the ugliest thing turned into the most beautiful. No words of mine can do it justice. But I do have to say that it’s such a profound love story, too.

Salman Rushdie’s memoir is horrific, upsetting – and a masterpiece… Knife is a tour-de-force, in which the great novelist takes his brutal near-murder and spins it into a majestic essay on art, pain and love…full of Rushdie’s wit, his wisdom, his stoicism, his optimism, his love of all culture from the so-called “high” to the so-called “low”.

Knife is a rich, immersive, feisty account of [Rushdie's] journey through darkness back to the light. Part thriller, part love story, part celebration of literature, it’s an incandescent book full of hair-raising descriptions of hard-won survival and beautiful, philosophical passages about art, freedom and resilience…Rushdie has not just enlarged literature’s capacities, he has expanded the world’s imaginative possibilities — and he has paid a tremendous price for it. We owe him a huge debt of gratitude.

Rushdie’s triumph is not to be other: despite his terrible injuries and the threat he still lives under, he remains incorrigibly himself, as passionate as ever about art and free speech... At one point he quotes Martin Amis: “When you publish a book, you either get away with it, or you don’t.” He has more than got away with this one. It’s scary but heartwarming, a story of hatred defeated by love.

With both candour and rich detail, and reminding us again of his knack for storytelling, Knife celebrates art and love over violence, resilience over acquiescence

Knife is a clarifying book. It reminds us of the threats the free world faces. It reminds us of the things worth fighting for. Rushdie’s friend Christopher Hitchens, in the wake of the initial fatwa, eloquently explained the stakes. The affair drew a line between “everything I hated versus everything I loved,” he wrote. “In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual and the defense of free expression.” His words apply to this book.

Although the account of his violent ordeal is dramatic…the book is also a nuanced meditation on life, death, the importance of art, and the chilling daily reality of violence... the book fulfils his aim to take charge of what happened on that terrible day and “to answer violence with art"

Rushdie has never written quite as directly as this, or emotionally. He emerges as stoic, droll, and astonishingly brave. “There are moments when these events are painful to set down,” he says. They’re painful to read, too, but necessary. As simple testimony, it makes for an incredibly compelling reading experience. The aim of the attack was ultimately to silence him. The aim failed. Salman Rushdie is a writer. The pen proved mightier than the sword after all.

Brave and compelling… Knife isn’t only Rushdie’s finest book in years, it’s also his most enjoyable

A surprisingly tender and redemptive story

Sir Salman Rushdie is a genius - only he could turn his stabbing into art... This is a brave book by a brave man. Bravo, Salman Rushdie

[A] profoundly life-affirming memoir… [but this] book should… shake us from our complacencies… [and] renew our resolve to confront and defeat the forces that led a young man to plunge a knife into an artist. Rushdie has done us a great service in writing this book. It is up to us now to heed its message

[An] extraordinary new book about the attempt on his life… People should certainly read this book… Rushdie’s light is undimmed

Salman Rushdie has turned the horrific attack on him into a masterpiece… Knife is a heroic, unflinching and immersive account of what it’s like to be on the receiving end of an attempted murder

[In Knife] Salman Rushdie remains as bold and direct as ever in defence of free speech

A searingly honest account… the power of love, resilience and his extraordinary way with words shines through. The result is a powerful and poignant read

A deeply moving account of this devastating attack and its consequences

One of the most remarkable works he has written in his fifty-year career… simultaneously harrowing and heartening… This book stands out among them [memoirs] for its combination of bravery and bravura

After reading Knife, it is impossible to feel despair. On the contrary: Rushdie’s irrepressible ebullience is an inspiration and a wake-up call… [a] magnificent book

Powerful and moving… Knife is a profound meditation on Rushdie’s life, on art, and second chances

Knife is a fascinating, challenging, and ultimately hope-filled book

[A] remarkable book… Elegantly and poignantly executed, it also brings a wry and witty touch to a horrific story. A testament to the power of literature

An astonishingly moving and defiant memoir

A visceral tale of a man on the brink of death

Good Housekeeping, *Summer Reads of 2024*

Visceral and surprisingly humorous

This erudite memoir chronicles what happened and Rushdie’s long, arduous recovery, but it’s also a love letter to literature and his wife

The Times, *Literary Non-Fiction Book of the Year*

A wonderfully idiosyncratic book, full of horrible details, yes, but also panegyric passages about his wife and funny asides about pop culture

A visceral account… Testament to his resilience and dark humour, the book finds the author reckoning with his mortality and “answer[ing] violence with art”

Knife is a moving tale with moments of powerful writing

An erudite love letter to literature and Rushdie’s wife

By turns gripping, beautiful, and rallying. Celebrating the power of art and literature, community and courage, Knife is defiant

On the morning of 12 August 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage in upstate New York, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black – black clothes, black mask – rushed down the aisle towards him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are. 
 
What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey of healing and recovery. This is an intimate and life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art – and finding the strength to stand up again.

Salman Rushdie

The Eleventh Hour is a book of five stories about ageing and dying… It might sound bleak, but the writing is funny and frisky, full of pace and panache

Entertaining and winningly heartfelt

If old age was thought of as an evening, ending in midnight oblivion, they were well into the eleventh hour. 
 
Two quarrelsome old men in Chennai, India, experience private tragedy against the backdrop of national calamity. Revisiting the Bombay neighbourhood of Midnight's Children, a magical musician is unhappily married to a multibillionaire. In an English university college, an undead academic asks a lonely student to avenge his former tormentor. 
 
These five dazzling works of fiction move between the three countries that Salman Rushdie has called home – India, England and America – and explore what it means to approach the eleventh hour of life. They are the reckoning with mortality that we all must one day make, and speak deeply to what the author has come from and through. 
 
Do we accommodate ourselves to death, or rail against it? How can we bid farewell to the places that we have made home? How do we achieve fulfilment with our lives if we don't know the end of our own stories? The Eleventh Hour ponders life and death, legacy and identity with the penetrating insight and boundless imagination that have made Salman Rushdie one of the most celebrated writers of our time. 
 
‘More than 40 years after Midnight's Children, there is still nobody who spins a yarn quite like Salman Rushdie’ Spectator 
 
‘Rushdie has not just enlarged literature’s capacities, he has expanded the world’s imaginative possibilities’ The Times 
 
‘Salman Rushdie is a genius’ A.M. Homes

Salman Rushdie

Praise for The Eleventh Hour

The Eleventh Hour is a book of five stories about ageing and dying… It might sound bleak, but the writing is funny and frisky, full of pace and panache

The Eleventh Hour is a book of five stories about ageing and dying… It might sound bleak, but the writing is funny and frisky, full of pace and panache

The Eleventh Hour is a book of five stories about ageing and dying… It might sound bleak, but the writing is funny and frisky, full of pace and panache

The Eleventh Hour is a book of five stories about ageing and dying… It might sound bleak, but the writing is funny and frisky, full of pace and panache

The Eleventh Hour is a book of five stories about ageing and dying… It might sound bleak, but the writing is funny and frisky, full of pace and panache

The Eleventh Hour is a book of five stories about ageing and dying… It might sound bleak, but the writing is funny and frisky, full of pace and panache

The Eleventh Hour is a book of five stories about ageing and dying… It might sound bleak, but the writing is funny and frisky, full of pace and panache

The Eleventh Hour is a book of five stories about ageing and dying… It might sound bleak, but the writing is funny and frisky, full of pace and panache

The Eleventh Hour is a book of five stories about ageing and dying… It might sound bleak, but the writing is funny and frisky, full of pace and panache

Books by Salman Rushdie

Articles featuring Salman Rushdie

New autobiography books and memoirs to read this year

The Penguin books that shocked society

A guide to magical realism

Must-read books of 2024: A look back at the year’s most exciting releases

Salman Rushdie to publish memoir KNIFE

Where to start reading Salman Rushdie

Books they tried to ban

Reading guide: Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

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