Saleem Sinai of the novel and the significance of its main character, calling "Midnight's Children" "an extraordinary literary jewel (it was awarded the Booker of Bookers in 1993, and a host of other prizes), focusing on the fates of two children that are inextricably linked by the hour of their birth, literally 'handcuffed to history'". Sinai is the product of extra-marital intercourse and is raised by a Muslim family after being exchanged at birth by his nurse, Mary Pereira. Over the course of the novel he goes from riches to rags. He has telepathic and other supernatural powers that are part of
Salman Rushdie 2005 novel "Shalimar the Clown" received, in India, the prestigious Hutch Crossword Book Award, and was, in the UK, a finalist for the Whitbread Book Awards. It was shortlisted for the 2007 International Dublin Literary Award. In his 2002 non-fiction collection "Step Across This Line", he professes his admiration for the Italian writer Italo Calvino and the American writer Thomas Pynchon, among others. His early influences included Jorge Luis Borges, Mikhail Bulgakov, Lewis Carroll, Günter Grass, and James Joyce. Rushdie was a personal friend of Angela Carter's and praised her highly in the foreword of her collection "Burning your Boats".