From rollason@dialup.francenet.fr Tue Jan 28 12:17:15 1997
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 20:05:00 GMT
From: CHRISTOPHER ROLLASON <rollason@dialup.francenet.fr>
To: grewals@acf2.NYU.EDU
Subject: Rushdie's 'Midnight's Children': voted 25th best book of C20 in UK

The 'Guardian' today (28-1-97) published the complete list of the '100
greatest books of the 20th century', as resulting from a readers' poll
organized jointly by Channel 4 and the bookshop chain Waterstones
(http:/:www.waterstones.co.uk).

Salman Rushdie's 'Midnight's Children' was voted 25th; Vikram Seth's
'A Suitable Boy' was No 50. These were the only two Anglo-Indian
novels on the list.

The winner was J.R.R. Tolkien's 'The Lord of the Rings'. Of possible
interest for comparison were Rushdie were:
Gabriel Garcia Marquez (sorry, accents omitted): One Hundred Years of
Solitude (8); Love In the Time of Cholera (43);
Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose (42);
Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (46).

The high placing of 'Midnight's Children' (above Virginia Woolf's 'To
the Lighthouse' - 29, Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' - 38, Forster's 'A
Passage to India' - 39 or Greene's 'The Power and the Glory' - 72)
confirms the recognized status of this novel - already voted the
'Booker of Bookers' - as a modern classic. It is, however, the only
one of SR's books on the list, which implies that, in the UK at least,
it must be easily his most popular work. I believe a BBC TV serial
version is in preparation.
Christopher Rollason
Metz, France
rollason@dialup.francenet.fr

'but would not change my free thoughts for a throne' (Byron)