The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature Allegorical novel by Salman Rushdie, published in 1981. It is a historical chronicle of modern India centering on the inextricably linked fates of two children born within the first hour of independence from Great Britain. Exactly at midnight on Aug. 15, 1947, two boys are born in a Bombay hospital, where they are switched by a nurse. Saleem Sinai, who will be raised by a well-to-do Muslim couple, is actually the illegitimate son of a low-caste Hindu woman and a departing British colonist. Shiva, the son of the Muslim couple, is given to a poor Hindu street performer whose unfaithful wife has died. Saleem represents modern India. When he is 30, he writes his memoir, Midnight's Children. Shiva is destined to be Saleem's enemy as well as India's most honored war hero. This multilayered novel places Saleem in every significant event that occurred on the Indian subcontinent in the 30 years after independence. Midnight's Children was awarded the Booker Prize for fiction in 1981.
