Midnight's Children

By: Salman Rushdie

Narrated by: Homer Todiwala

Length: 25 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

This Audible production expertly brings to life Salman Rushdie’s postcolonial masterpiece Midnight’s Children, available for the first time unabridged in audio. A magical tale of discovery and identity, Midnight’s Children explores the wonders and perils of India’s birth through the eyes and actions of a child blessed with extraordinary powers.

About the book

Salman Rushdie’s second novel, Midnight’s Children, was an immediate success following its publication in 1981. The winner of both the Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize that year, it also went on to win the Booker best all-time prize in both 1993 and 2008.

Written in the magical-realist style that Rushdie is renowned for, Midnight’s Children follows Saleem Sinai - a child gifted with extraordinary powers after being born at the exact moment India becomes independent. The captivating events that unfold act as an allegory for India’s transition from colonialism to independence as Saleem finds himself 'handcuffed to history', with his fate entwined with that of his newly independent state.

Midnight’s Children is both comedy and tragedy, blending the real with the surreal as an enthralling family saga unwinds against the backdrop of a postcolonial India. A stunning story, rich with vibrant images and delightful characters, it thoroughly deserves its place as a modern masterpiece and an inspiration for a whole generation of future Indian writers.

About the author

One of the most celebrated and controversial authors in modern literature, Salman Rushdie is a multi-award-winning British Indian novelist whose writings on magical realism and postcolonialism have inspired and enchanted millions of people around the world. Born in Bombay in 1947, his early years were spent in India before moving to England and eventually reading history at King's College, University of Cambridge.

Rushdie first gained fame following the publication of his second novel, Midnight’s Children, but it was the publication of his fourth book, The Satanic Verses, that resulted in global notoriety. Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against him which resulted in death threats and the banning of the book in 13 countries. A winner of dozens of the highest awards in literature, Rushdie was also the recipient of a knighthood in the UK in 2007.

©1981 Salman Rushdie (P)2018 Audible, Ltd

Just wow

What a fantastical brain that dreamt up this incredible journey of a book! I am in awe and feel like I've come across literary genius for the first time in my life. informative and spellbinding!

Remarkable book, but…

This is a giant book, and a mammoth task for a reader. By the time I reached the third section I was getting every fed up with the strange gulping saliva noises the reader kept making - couldn’t these be edited?!

Also- it felt like much of the performance was sight-read, since all too often the reader misunderstood, miscalculated or got the emphasis of Rushdie’s gargantuan sentences wrong. It’s a disservice to this astonishing piece of literature not to spend even a little time parsing his rapturous prose…

Brilliant

My first Rushdie...now I understand why he is in the haloed circles. Great style, tempo, and a cutting sense of humour. A must read for the style of bombayyia and Indian English captured so well.