Saleem’s life is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirror the course of modern India at its most impossible, in Salman Rushdie’s masterpiece.
The Booker Prize 1981
Salman Rushdie, Graham Swift and Malcolm Bradbury
A book so good it won a Booker Prize three times. Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children went on to scoop the anniversary Booker of Bookers and The Best of the Booker prizes too.
Rushdie won Booker Prize bragging rights when he became the first of the golden generation – Kazuo Ishiguro, Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan and Graham Swift et al – to win the prize. His story, an allegory with a dose of magical realism and an underpinning of real events, is set around partition and the independence of India and is held as an exemplar of post-colonial fiction.
It also gained Rushdie the dubious distinction of a defamation case brought by the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Winner The Booker Prize 1981
- By
- Salman Rushdie
- Published by
- Jonathan Cape
Saleem’s life is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirror the course of modern India at its most impossible, in Salman Rushdie’s masterpiece.
The shortlist
Heroine and deluded narrator Aroon St Charles understands nothing, yet reveals everything, in this wickedly dark comedy from Molly Keane.
By Molly Keane
In the third book of Doris Lessing’s Canopus in Argos series, Earth continues to evolve under manipulation by advanced extra-terrestrial civilisations.
An English couple on holiday encounter an unsettling stranger in Ian McEwan’s chilling psychological thriller about love, violence and obsession.
By Ian McEwan
During a romantic journey down the Rhine, one woman’s imagination is stretched almost to breaking point in Ann Schlee’s gloriously evocative novel.
By Ann Schlee
A would-be novelist takes inspiration from life - but then finds the tables are mysteriously turned, in Muriel Spark’s entertaining literary joyride.
By Muriel Spark
D.M. Thomas’ modern classic of enduring emotional power was heralded by Salman Rushdie as a novel of ‘blazing imagination and intellectual thought’.
By D.M. Thomas
The 1981 judges
A world was created full of clamour and scent, food smells, flowers and colour. I can still remember the thrill of its magic, the nosebleed turning to rubies on the page.
— Helena Kennedy