Salman Rushdie · 1981 · overland

Salman Rushdie's 1981 Booker-winning novel, the story of Saleem Sinai, born at the precise midnight of India's independence and telepathically bound to the thousand other children of that hour. His life mirrors the subcontinent's: from his grandfather's Kashmir and the Amritsar massacre to a charmed Bombay childhood, exile to Pakistan, the horror of the 1971 war in the Sundarbans, and the Emergency in Delhi. A sprawling, magical-realist map of three nations born from one midnight.

1. 1
   Srinagar

   In a Kashmir valley, Saleem's grandfather Aadam Aziz examines a beautiful patient through a perforated sheet, and the story of a family and a nation begins.

2. 2
   Amritsar

   At Amritsar he is thrown to the ground as the British guns open fire on the crowd at Jallianwala Bagh.

3. 3
   Agra

   The family settles in Agra, in the shadow of a changing India.

4. 4
   Bombay

   And in Bombay, on the stroke of midnight on 15 August 1947, Saleem Sinai is born at the very moment of India's freedom, his life handcuffed to history.

5. 5
   Karachi

   After ruin and scandal the family migrates to Karachi, and the new land of Pakistan.

6. 6
   The Sundarbans

   Swept into the 1971 war, Saleem is lost in the green nightmare of the Sundarbans, in the birth-throes of Bangladesh.

7. 7
   Delhi

   Back in India, in a magicians' slum in Delhi, the midnight children are crushed in the iron grip of the Emergency.

8. 8
   Bombay

   And at last back to Bombay, where, cracking like an overused pickle jar, Saleem sets down his chronicle.