Saleem Sinai is born in Bombay at the exact moment India becomes independent on 15 August 1947, and he comes to believe his life is chained to the fate of the nation. Writing his story in a pickle factory while he races against his own physical decline, he starts decades earlier with his grandfather, a Kashmiri doctor, and works forward through family secrets and swapped identities.
Saleem learns that all 1,001 children born in the first hour of independence have magical gifts, and his own telepathy lets him convene them in his head. His fortunes track the country's: Partition aftershocks, the wars with Pakistan, the birth of Bangladesh and Indira Gandhi's Emergency. His rival Shiva, born at the same instant, embodies the violent counter-current to Saleem's hopes.
Rushdie writes in an exuberant, digressive voice that mixes Indian oral storytelling with magic realism and Bombay slang. The novel won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was later named the Booker of Bookers and the Best of the Booker, and it changed what Indian writing in English felt free to attempt.
Book details
| Author | Salman Rushdie |
|---|---|
| First published | 1981 |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Literary fiction |
| Type | Fiction |
| Pages (approx.) | 647 |
| Setting | Kashmir, Amritsar, Agra, Bombay, Karachi and Dhaka, 1915 to 1977 |
| Awards | Booker Prize 1981, Booker of Bookers 1993, Best of the Booker 2008 |
Themes
- Partition
- National identity
- Memory and storytelling
- Fate
- The emergency
Who should read it
Readers ready for a dense, playful epic that retells modern South Asian history through one unreliable narrator.