Midnight's Children prize winners in 1993 and 2008 to celebrate the Booker Prize 25th and 40th anniversary. In 2003, the novel was listed on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's "best-loved novels". It was also added to the list of Great Books of the 20th Century, published by Penguin Books. "Midnight's Children" is a loose allegory for events in India both before and, primarily, after the independence and partition of India. The protagonist and narrator of the story is Saleem Sinai, born at the exact moment when India became an independent country. He was born with telepathic powers, as
The Rushdie Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West analysis of the issues raised". Other positive reviews appeared in the Library Journal, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. the LA Times, For François Dupuis-Déri (Columbia University), Pipes book can be understood in the neoconservative idea of the "Clash of Civilizations". According to Emilie Réné, in "Les Cahiers du CERI" (CERI is a French public institution in political science), Pipes' essay "suffers from oversimplification". The Rushdie Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West The Rushdie Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West is a book written by historian Daniel Pipes, published in 1990. It focuses on events surrounding "The Satanic