Awarded the Booker Prize in 1981, Midnight's Children is Salman Rushdie's most highly regarded work of fiction, though not his best known. That distinction belongs to The Satanic Verses, the 1988 novel that prompted Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who considered the book blasphemous, to declare Rushdie an enemy of Islam and put a $1.5 million bounty on his head. But in Midnight's Children, Rushdie had already produced a novel that not only risks offending some readers, but also fiercely challenges our understanding of history, nationhood, and narrative.