Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children: Adapted for the Theatre by Salman Rushdie, Simon Reade and Tim Supple

In the moments of upheaval that surround the stroke of midnight on August 14--15, 1947, the day India proclaimed its independence from Great Britain, 1,001 children are born--each of whom is gifted with supernatural powers. Midnight’s Children focuses on the fates of two of them--the illegitimate son of a poor Hindu woman and the male heir of a wealthy Muslim family--who become inextricably linked when a midwife switches the boys at birth.

An allegory of modern India, Midnight’s Children is a family saga set against the volatile events of the thirty years following the country’s independence--the partitioning of India and Pakistan, the rule of Indira Gandhi, the onset of violence and war, and the imposition of martial law. It is a magical and haunting tale, of fragmentation and of the struggle for identity and belonging that links personal life with national history.

In collaboration with Simon Reade, Tim Supple and the Royal Shakespeare Society, Salman Rushdie has adapted his masterpiece for the stage.

The original stage adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, winner of the 1993 Booker of Bookers, the best book to win the Booker Prize in its first twenty-five years.

In the moments of upheaval that surround the stroke of midnight on August 14--15, 1947, the day India proclaimed its independence from Great Britain, 1,001 children are born--each of whom is gifted with supernatural powers. Midnight’s Children focuses on the fates of two of them--the illegitimate son of a poor Hindu woman and the male heir of a wealthy Muslim family--who become inextricably linked when a midwife switches the boys at birth.

An allegory of modern India, Midnight’s Children is a family saga set against the volatile events of the thirty years following the country’s independence--the partitioning of India and Pakistan, the rule of Indira Gandhi, the onset of violence and war, and the imposition of martial law. It is a magical and haunting tale, of fragmentation and of the struggle for identity and belonging that links personal life with national history.

In collaboration with Simon Reade, Tim Supple and the Royal Shakespeare Society, Salman Rushdie has adapted his masterpiece for the stage.

One of the most celebrated writers of our time, SALMAN RUSHDIE is the author of ten previous novels— Grimus, Midnight's Children (for which he won the Booker Prize in 1981, the Booker of Bookers in 1993, and, in 2008, the Best of the Booker), Shame, The Satanic Verses, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, The Moor's Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Fury, Shalimar the Clown, and The Enchantress of Florence. He has also published four works of non-fiction, a collection of short stories, and edited two fiction anthologies. In June 2007, Rushdie was appointed a Knight Bachelor by Queen Elizabeth II for services to literature. He holds the rank Commandeur in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France and began a five-year term as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emory University in 2007. In May 2008, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and also in 2008, the London Times ranked Rushdie thirteenth on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". For two years he served as president of The PEN American Center, the world's oldest human rights organization, and is the chair of PEN's World Voices Festival of International Literature, an annual literary festival he began in New York in 2001. Rushdie is currently working on the film version of Midnight's Children.