Midnights Children

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November 6, 2008, New York, NY - Deepa Mehta and Salman Rushdie will collaborate on a film version of Rushdie's acclaimed novel Midnight's Children, the two announced today during the 8th annual Mahindra Indo-American Arts Council (MIAAC) Film Festival.

Ms. Mehta and Mr. Rushdie are co-writing a screenplay based on Rushdie's "Booker of Bookers" Prize-winning novel. Published in 1981, Midnight's Children is the fictional memoir of Saleem Sinai, one of 1001 children born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India's independence.

"In literature there are only a handful of characters that remain indelible in my mind. On top of my list is Saleem, the protagonist of Salman Rushdie's brilliant novel Midnight's Children," said Mehta. "I am absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to bring Saleem, his journey, and the incredible world he inhabits to the screen. To collaborate with Salman on the script, to have access to his humor and his sensibility is a process I am immensely looking forward to."

"I'm delighted that my friend Deepa Mehta has agreed to make a film of Midnight's Children. Her passion for the book, combined with her immense talent as a filmmaker, means that my novel has been placed in the best possible hands. I also look forward to working with her on the screenplay," said Rushdie.

Ms. Mehta and Mr. Rushdie are longtime patrons of and advisors to the MIAAC film festival. Ms. Mehta's new film, Heaven on Earth, opened the festival with its New York premiere on November 5, 2008.

Deepa Mehta was born in Amritsar, India, and studied philosophy at the University of New Delhi before immigrating to Canada. Her feature debut, Sam and Me (1991), received a special mention in the Caméra d'Or competition at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival. After directing Camilla (1994), she started on her elemental trilogy about India. She completed Fire (1996) and Earth (1998) before making Bollywood/Hollywood (2002) and the The Republic of Love (2003) while production on Oscar-nominated Water (2005) was suspended due to protests. Heaven on Earth (2008) is her most recent film.

Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay, India, in 1947. He is the author of ten novels, including Shalimar the Clown, The Enchantress of Florence, Midnight's Children, which won the Booker Prize in 1981, Shame, winner of the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, The Satanic Verses,
which won the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which won the Writers Guild Award, The Moor's Last Sigh, which won him the Whitbread Prize again, and The Ground Beneath Her Feet. He has also published a collection of short stories, East, West,
a book of reportage, The Jaguar Smile, and two volumes of essays, Imaginary Homelands and Step Across This Line.

In 1993, Midnight's Children was voted the Booker of Bookers, the best novel to have won the Booker Prize in its first 25 years. This year, on the prize's 40th anniversary, it was again named the Best of the Booker, this time by readers' votes.

Salman Rushdie is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an Honorary Professor in the Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is a Commander in the Order of Arts and Letters in France. In 2007 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to literature. His books have been published in more than forty languages.

ABOUT MIDNIGHT's CHILDREN
Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India's independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India's 1,000 other "midnight's children," all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts.

This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people-a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Twenty-five years after its publication, Midnight's Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.

Midnight's Children won both the 1981 Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the same year. It was awarded the "Booker of Bookers" Prize and the best all-time prize winners in 1993 and 2008 to celebrate the Booker Prize 25th and 40th anniversary.Midnight's Children is also the only Indian novel on Time's list of the 100 best English-language novels since its founding in 1923.