Midnight's Children

This masterfully-written novel follows Saleem Sinai, a man gifted with telepathy, as he navigates India's tumultuous beginnings as an independent nation. Born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, he's one of 1,001 "midnight's children" endowed with special powers, and discovers he was switched at birth with another child. As he attempts to gather the other gifted children for a parliament to save the nation, he faces dangerous complications from a brutish killer. Through it all, Rushdie's prose is both hilarious and heartbreaking, filled with exuberant language and allusions to Bombay's film industry.