Midnight’s Children - BBC Radio Drama - Salman Rushdie

Written by Salman Rushdie
Read by Full Cast
Format: M4B
Bitrate: 160 Kbps
Dramatization

Nikesh Patel stars as Saleem in BBC Radio 4’s epic dramatisation of Salman Rushdie’s Booker Prize-winning novel of love, history and magic.

Saleem Sinai is born on the stroke of midnight on 14th-15th August 1947, at the exact moment that India and Pakistan become separate, independent nations. From that moment on, his fate is mysteriously handcuffed to the history of his country.

But Saleem’s story starts almost thirty years earlier, when his grandfather, Dr Aadam Aziz, falls in love with a woman concealed behind a perforated sheet. That pivotal moment in Kashmir in 1919 sparks a series of bizarre events that will lead to a cryptic prophecy and the birth of a boy with an extraordinary destiny. As a ‘Midnight’s Child’, Saleem has magical powers, and can telepathically tune in to all the other gifted children whose birth coincided with India’s division. However, his strange entanglement with the fate of India will have dramatic repercussions for both him and his country….

Adapted by Ayeesha Menon, this dazzling dramatisation of Rushdie’s many-layered, magical realist masterpiece is both an enthralling family saga and a riveting history of post-colonialism.

Nikesh Patel as Saleem Sinai
Zain Syed as Young Saleem
Meera Syal as Amina and Aadam Aziz’s Mother
Nitin Ganatra as Shiva
Chetna Pandya as Mary Pereira
Aysha Kala as Parvati-the-Witch
Deeivya Meir as Jamila Singer
Abhin Galeya as Aadam Aziz
Anneika Rose as Mumtaz
Narinder Samra as Ahmed Sinai
Misha Shah as Young Jamila, the Brass Monkey
Kulvinder Ghir as Homi Catrack
Sagar Arya as Sergeant Major Najmuddin
Ahren Chadha as Sonny
Kerry Gooderson as Evie Burns
Selva Rasalingam as The Teacher

Nael Ameen, Nikita Mehta, Shiven Shankar, and Shreya Shah as other Midnight’s Children

My recordings from BBC Sounds 320kbps streams. I edited off the Radio 4 announcer and saved as 160kbps VBR

First broadcast in 2017