Midnight's Children: A Joke

Yes, this is another Rushdie sighting. At the final event of the Distinguished Speakers Series at the University of Buffalo last week, the author read excerpts from his work and gave "intimate glimpses" into his life.

Among other things, he described the genesis of Midnight's Children: "...[It] was born out of a joke his parents told—a joke he hated because it was told so often. The joke played on the coincidence of his birth in Bombay and Indian independence. "I was born in June 1947; exactly eight weeks later the British ran away." Rushdie later recalled the joke and employed it for literary purposes, deciding "there didn't have to be an eight-week gap." This autobiographical beginning led to the simultaneous birth of the main character, Sinai, and the birth of an independent India in a novel that won England's Booker McConnell Prize for fiction. "Childhood, one's personal life, is an incredibly rich, fertile soil to grow plants," Rushdie said. "But beginnings are not endings. Characteristically, in writing a work of art, you make a journey from something you know to something you create."