Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

Browsing the Guardian’s top 100 novels list after reading their no.1 choice, Middlemarch (review, ⭐️⭐️) I saw Salman Rushdie in at 23 and I realised I’ve never read his stuff. His name was forever in the news when I was a child, hiding from very cross muslims but his novels had passed me by. So I picked this up – long again, clocking in at 650 pages after Middlemarch’s 900 – and enjoyed it too. A fantastical story against the backdrop of the real history of the partition of india/pakistan, following a generally unlucky guy and his unluckier still family. The book’s name Midnight Children comes from the 1000 odd children born at midnight at the start of the partition who each get an individual super power (flight/time travel/telepathy/ability to kill with ones knees/invisibility etc). Very annoyingly these kids and the special powers feature almost zero in this book! Mostly just the grind of poverty, war, death, and hysterical indian ladies. Still, a good yarn that veers from funny to…