Winner of the Booker prize and twice winner of the Booker of Bookers, Midnight's Children is "one of the most important books to come out of the English-speaking world in this generation" (New York Review of Books). Reissued for the 40th anniversary of the original publication--with a new introduction from the author--Salman Rushdie's widely acclaimed novel is a masterpiece in literature. 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. 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.

Signs (Chinha), written in 1946, was Manik Bandyopadhyay's fifteenth novel, and is something of a hidden gem of Bengali literature.The novel is set in the mass uprisings that Calcutta witnessed in protest against the trial and sentencing of Captain Rashid Ali of the Indian National Army. These outbursts of popular anger were initiated by students, and involved large sections of the working people.The author weaves together a number of episodes, meetings and partings happening simultaneously at different locations through a kind of narrative 'montage'. The narration represents this revolutionary moment witnessed through the eyes of myriads of people who make it, whether by participating in it or by being caught up in it, by remaining on the margin or by trying to use it to their own purpose, or even by resisting it. It is a rare attempt to catch the internal dynamics of the action by focussing on the fast-changing relationships among its speaking, thinking, acting human agents, when the singular motive force of the objective situation is manifested in the multiplicity of responses.Signs was such a departure from the writing of the time that the author noted, 'It is written in a new technique. I do not know whether it should be called a novel.' Manik Bandyopadhyay failed to interest his publisher into issuing a second print during his lifetime. It was published again after his death.This is the first English translation of this modernist masterpiece, introduced and annotated by scholar and activist Malini Bhattacharya.