Rushdie's first novel,
Grimus (1975), a part-science fiction tale, was generally ignored by the public and literary critics. His next novel,
Midnight's Children (1981), catapulted him to literary notability. This work won the 1981
Booker Prize and, in 1993 and 2008, was awarded the Best of the Bookers as the best novel to have received the prize during its first 25 and 40 years.
[15] Midnight's Children follows the life of a child, born at the stroke of midnight as India gained its independence, who is endowed with special powers and a connection to other children born at the dawn of a new and tumultuous age in the history of the Indian sub-continent and
the birth of the modern nation of India. The character of Saleem Sinai has been compared to Rushdie.
[16] However, the author has refuted the idea of having written any of his characters as autobiographical, stating, "People assume that because certain things in the character are drawn from your own experience, it just becomes you. In that sense, I’ve never felt that I’ve written an autobiographical character."
[17]
After
Midnight's Children, Rushdie wrote
Shame (1983), in which he depicts the political turmoil in
Pakistan, basing his characters on
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and General
Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq.
Shame won France's
Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Best Foreign Book) and was a close runner-up for the Booker Prize. Both these works of
postcolonial literature are characterised by a style of
magic realism and the immigrant outlook that Rushdie is very conscious of as a member of the
Indian diaspora.
