Midnights Children

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 twentyfive years. In the moments of upheaval that surround the stroke of midnight on August 1415 1947 the day India proclaimed its independence from Great Britain 1001 children are borneach of whom is gifted with supernatural powers. Midnight’s Children focuses on the fates of two of themthe illegitimate son of a poor Hindu woman and the male heir of a wealthy Muslim familywho 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 independencethe 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.