10 Captivating Insights into Salman Rushdie’s ‘Midnight’s Children’

Upon its release in 1981, The New York Times proclaimed that “the literary landscape of India is poised for a dramatic transformation.” The narrative follows Saleem Sinai, whose birth coincides precisely with India’s independence, granting him extraordinary powers. His life story is intricately woven with India’s post-colonial journey. Beyond its exploration of India’s socio-political climate, the novel is celebrated for introducing Salman Rushdie’s unique narrative style—marked by irony, reverence, humor, and a deep engagement with pop culture.

Salman Rushdie was almost born at the stroke of midnight.

The novel highlights the significance of the 1001 “midnight’s children,” born during the initial hour of India’s independence. Rushdie, born in Bombay just under two months before August 15, 1947—the day India gained independence and was partitioned—was deeply influenced by this historical moment. His personal connection to this era is evident in the book’s blending of individual and national narratives. As Rushdie once remarked, “India is my kid sister.”

Without Rushdie’s debut novel, Grimus, Midnight’s Children might never have come to life.

Published in 1975, Rushdie’s first work, Grimus, provided the financial means for him to revisit his homeland. Using a £700 advance from the book, he embarked on a journey in 1975, which he described as a “series of 15-hour bus rides and modest lodgings.” This trip reignited his ambition to write a “novel of childhood,” inspired by his own memories of growing up in Bombay.

The harsh criticism of Grimus also influenced Rushdie’s approach to his next work. “I was deeply affected by the negative reception of my first book. It was disheartening,” Rushdie shared with Harvard Business Review in 2015. “However, it also pushed me to reevaluate my writing process and start anew with a fresh perspective. This ultimately led to the creation of Midnight’s Children. Perhaps it was a necessary misstep that allowed me to discover the writer I was destined to become.”

Rushdie adapted a character from an incomplete novel for Midnight’s Children.

Prior to Midnight’s Children, Rushdie had drafted a novel titled The Antagonist, which he later deemed “an unmistakable imitation of the great Tom [Pynchon], rendering it unsuitable for publication.” His journey to India reminded him of a character from this discarded work, which he later integrated into the narrative of Midnight’s Children. Saleem Sinai eventually emerged as a landmark figure in the English literary tradition of the Indian subcontinent.

“Once I positioned Saleem at the heart of my new narrative,” Rushdie reflected, “I realized that his birthdate would require me to expand the scope of my story. To align his life with India’s, I needed to chronicle the tales of both. It evolved from a simple childhood story into a complex intertwining of personal and national histories. Saleem, ever the seeker of significance, merged these threads, implying that the trajectory of modern Indian history was, in some way, his responsibility.”

Rushdie sought inspiration from literary giants during the writing process.

Rushdie spent five years crafting Midnight’s Children. In 2021, he disclosed that he drew inspiration from a wealth of classic literature: Russian masterpieces like Crime and Punishment, Anna Karenina, and Dead Souls; English works such as Tristam Shandy and Vanity Fair; modern classics including The Tin Drum, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Adventures of Augie March, and Catch-22; as well as Indian oral traditions and epics like the Mahabharata, Ramayana, and Panchatantra. Additionally, Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, Elsa Morante’s History: A Novel, and Bollywood cinema also shaped his vision.

“As evident, I aimed to craft a novel of immense ambition, a daring act without a safety net, an all-or-nothing endeavor: Bollywood or bust, as one might phrase it,” Rushdie remarked. “I was an unproven, obscure writer. To create such a book, I had to learn by doing; to grow through the process of writing it.”

Rushdie experimented with language in Midnight’s Children.

The BBC has described Midnight’s Children as a “linguistic innovation” where the author “redefines conventional English.”

In a 2008 paper published in Transnational Literature [PDF], O.P. Dwivedi analyzed Rushdie’s linguistic approach. The novel incorporates Hindi, Urdu, and Hindustani terms without providing explanations for Western readers, enhancing its “authenticity and credibility.” Rushdie also utilizes Indian slang, invents new slang (such as writery for writing), and blends Latin and Arabic to create hybrid words and phrases.

Rushdie intentionally misspells English words—like unquestionabel—which, as Dwivedi notes, “reflects how Indians use English in everyday life.” He forms unique word combinations (e.g., blackasnight) and invents hybrid terms like chutnification, which merges chutney—a staple of Indian cuisine—with -ification. This term became synonymous with blending Indian elements into English.

“Rushdie’s extensive linguistic innovations in Midnight’s Children have established it as a profoundly intricate and demanding piece of fiction,” Dwivedi notes. “His bold and sometimes surprising experiments with language have captivated readers and critics globally, solidifying Indian English fiction’s place in today’s fiercely competitive literary landscape.”

He implemented two significant revisions before the book’s publication.

When Rushdie submitted the manuscript of Midnight’s Children to his editor Liz Calder at Jonathan Cape, the initial feedback from a reader was less than enthusiastic: “The author should focus on short stories until he masters the novel form.” (Later reviews were more favorable.) Cape secured the UK rights, while Alfred Knopf acquired the U.S. rights. Calder helped Rushdie correct what he referred to as “two major errors”: an unnecessary character serving as the audience and a timeline inconsistency. Rushdie removed the character and reorganized the narrative into a chronological structure.

Midnight’s Children appeared to be plagued by misfortune.

The release of Midnight’s Children faced multiple delays, Rushdie recounted. In a series of ironic events mirroring the novel’s themes of personal and political intersections, the book’s initial printing was stalled by a printers’ strike in the U.S., a transport strike delayed its arrival in England, and a dock-workers’ strike further postponed the distribution of the printed copies.

While the idea of countless copies of a 20th-century literary masterpiece decaying in shipping containers aligns with Rushdie’s ironic perspective, in the end, labor disputes and fate’s sardonic humor were no match for the power of a remarkable book. Midnight’s Children garnered global acclaim. In a 2006 reflection, Rushdie remarked (with his trademark mix of humility and pride), “If it can withstand the test of another generation or two, it may endure.”

The novel transformed Rushdie’s life ...

In an interview with The Guardian, Rushdie shared that “the books that altered my life were the ones I wrote, not the ones I read.” He had hoped that “a handful of strangers might read and appreciate” Midnight’s Children, but admitted he was “utterly unprepared for the outcome. It granted me the life I had always desired—a writer’s life—and for much of the 1980s, I lived that life with profound gratitude and joy.”

… And also led to legal battles.

Three years following the release of Midnight’s Children, Rushdie and his publisher faced a lawsuit from Indira Gandhi, India's prime minister, alleging defamation over a specific sentence in the book. Rushdie clarified that the sentence reiterated a widely known anecdote from that era, suggesting that Sanjay, her son, held his mother responsible for his father's premature death due to a heart attack. Feroze Gandhi, Sanjay's father, passed away after separating from Indira, leading Sanjay to blame her and, consequently, making her feel guilty. This narrative, widely circulated and published across India, was presented in the novel as a rumor.

Upon submitting the manuscript, Rushdie had highlighted the contentious sentence to his publishers, acknowledging his inability to substantiate it, given that two individuals mentioned were deceased, and the third might pursue legal action. He argued, however, that since the story was already public knowledge, he saw no issue with its inclusion. This preemptive disclosure proved crucial when Gandhi initiated the lawsuit, as it established the publishers' acceptance of the narrative's public domain status, thereby preventing them from disavowing Rushdie.

Rushdie recounted that Gandhi's lawsuit did not seek financial compensation but merely demanded the removal of the sentence from subsequent editions. He expressed no significant opposition to this request, deeming the sentence inconsequential to the novel's plot—merely contextual background. An agreement was reached to excise the sentence from future printings, but Gandhi's assassination rendered the matter moot, as legal actions for defamation cannot be pursued against the deceased.

Reflecting on his work, Rushdie has described Midnight’s Children as “a young man’s book.”

Midnight’s Children, which won the Booker Prize in 1981, “transformed my life in remarkable ways,” Rushdie remarked in 2015. “It shaped how readers perceived me as an author and granted me financial freedom. However, my writing style has evolved since then. That book was the work of a younger man. I began writing it in my late twenties and saw it published at 33. … That was decades ago. The beauty of a writer’s life is that there’s no endpoint; you simply move on to the next project.” Rushdie’s most recent work, Knife: Meditations on an Attempted Murder—a detailed narrative of the 2022 assault on his life in Chautauqua, New York—was released in April 2024.