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
Saleem Sinai a special connection with those born in South Asia at the same historic moment. He is also unusual in having an unsightly nose that constantly runs and bulging temples. Rushdie grants the character supernatural powers and he comes to symbolize and embody the struggle and strains of a nation being born and torn into pieces all at the same time. The character is borrowed from the draft of an earlier novel called "The Antagonist". In a theatrical version of the novel, Zubin Varla played Saleem Sinai. He said he identified strongly with the story as, "His own family hailed from