With Partition, Pakistan declared itself a homeland for British India’s Muslims. Midnight’s Children brilliantly captures these contradictions through Salim and his family’s history. But independence was also conjoined with the violent and traumatic partitioning of British India into the new nations of Pakistan and India.

Midnight on August 15 is the moment that India, in the words of its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, “awakened to light and freedom”. The book’s protagonist, Salim Sinai, is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15 1947, which grants him telepathic powers. His influential novel of 1981, the Booker prize-winning Midnight’s Children, is a work of magic realism, in which the fantastic and the ordinary coexist in the fictional realm. Hope from despair: how young people are taking action to make things better What it really meant to be punk in Britain The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. This article is part of Quarter Life, a series about issues affecting those of us in our twenties and thirties. In 15 works of fiction (12 novels, two children’s books and a short story collection) and an eclectic body of non-fiction (including anthologies of essays, a memoir and a travelogue), he compelled western readers and writers to look away from literature’s North Atlantic centre of gravity. Rushdie’s confident embrace of this dizzying collision of opposites totally rewrote the rules of the global literary game. His style is somehow both street-smart and highbrow. His tone alternates between arrogant and self-deprecating. If you’re only getting to know Rushdie as a result of this incident, you’re about to discover how his work has changed literature, inspired generations of writers and also been deeply dividing.Ī chronicler of Indian modernity through fantastical plot twists and detailed evocations of urban life, Salman Rushdie’s narratorial voice is conspiratorial, irreverent and chatty. But you might be wondering how a writer came to be the target of such violence. Thankfully, the author survived the attack. On the eve of India’s 75th anniversary of independence (August 15), the 75-year-old Salman Rushdie was stabbed multiple times on stage in New York.

Salman rushdie alias