Midnight’s Children won the 2008 Booker of Bookers Prize.(click here) I was thinking of Midnight’s Children, on eof my most beloved novels, yesterday as I watched Ghandi on TV. Reading it, all those many years ago, was a revelation, not just about India, but about novels. Reading Rushdie for the first time was like reading Dickens for the first time: Look what you can do! I was also happy to see that Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda was on the list, although I think his other Booker winner, The True Adventures of the Kelly Gang, is perhaps even better. Carey was a recent discovery for me, and a thrilling one. The others on the short list were JM Coetzee’s Disgrace, Pat Barker’s The Ghost Road, Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist and J G Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur. None of which have I read. The shame of it. And the delight. Four new books! Four writers to experience for the first time!

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