Editing Midnight's Children (section)

==Reception==
Upon release, the book was generally well-received.<ref>{{Cite news |title=The 100 best novels: No 91 – Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (1981)
|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/15/100-best-novels-midnights-children-salman-rushdie- |access-date=22 January 2024 |website=[[The Guardian]]|date=15 June 2015 |last1=McCrum |first1=Robert }}</ref> According to Rushdie, "...I celebrated the book’s critical reception...The three I have never forgotten were written by Anita Desai in the Washington Post, by Clark Blaise in the New York Times and by Robert Towers in the New York Review of Books."<ref name="latimes.com">{{Cite web |title=Giving birth to 'Midnight's Children'
|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-28-oe-rushdie28-story.html |access-date=22 January 2024 |website=[[Los Angeles Times]]|date=28 July 2008 }}</ref>

According to Rushdie, there was "one memorable bad review".<ref name="latimes.com"/> In his words from ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'', "The BBC radio program “Kaleidoscope” had devoted a great deal of time to my novel, and given it the works: Indian music to introduce it, a reading, a sympathetic interview with me, and then it was over to their critic ... who unreservedly hated the book. The program’s presenter, Sheridan Morley, kept asking this critic (whose name I’ve forgotten) to find some little thing to praise. “But didn’t you think ... “ “Wouldn’t you at least agree that ... “ and so on. The critic was implacable. No, no, there was nothing he had liked at all. After the magnificent buildup, this negative intransigence was delightfully, bathetically funny."<ref name="latimes.com"/>

''Midnight's Children'' was awarded the 1981 [[Booker Prize]], the [[English-Speaking Union|English Speaking Union]] Literary Award, and the [[James Tait Black Memorial Prize|James Tait Prize]]. It also was awarded [[The Best of the Booker]] prize twice, in 1993 and 2008 (this was an award given out by the Booker committee to celebrate the 25th and 40th anniversary of the award).<ref name="bob" />

The book went on to sell over one million copies in the UK alone.<ref>{{cite web |title=Barneys, Books and Bust-Ups: 50 Years of the Booker Prize |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06nnp84|publisher=BBC|date=12 October 2018}}</ref>

In 1984 Prime Minister [[Indira Gandhi]] brought an action against the book in the British courts, claiming to have been defamed by a single sentence in the penultimate paragraph of chapter 28, in which her son [[Sanjay Gandhi]] was said to have had a hold over his mother by his accusing her of contributing to his father [[Feroze Gandhi]]'s death through her neglect. The case was settled out of court when Salman Rushdie agreed to remove the offending sentence.<ref>This is reported by Salman Rushdie himself in his introduction to the 2006 25th Anniversary special edition, Vintage books, dated 25 December 2005 {{ISBN|978-0-09-957851-2}}</ref>