25 Years After Midnight

“The author should concentrate on short stories until he has mastered the novel form.” That was the first reader's report of Rushdie's Midnight's Children which, thankfully was ignored. The author shares this and other information about his years writing the novel, his time in advertising, his struggle to come up with an apt title and more in the preface to the 25th anniversary edition of his seminal novel. He ends, with uncharacteristic modesty: "Like all novels, Midnight’s Children is a product of its moment in history, touched and shaped by its time in ways that its author cannot wholly know. I am very glad that it still seems like a book worth reading in this very different time. If it can pass the test of another generation or two, it may endure. I will not be around to see that. But I am happy that I saw it leap the first hurdle."