Probably the most influential British writer of the latter part of the twentieth century was Salman Rushdie. Midnight's Children, which won the Booker Prize in 1981, was later twice awarded the Booker of Bookers as being the best work in the 25 and then 40 year history of the prize. There was really no questioning of this decision.

The work also firmly established in the mainstream of English writing the technique known as magic realism, which in essence turned the notion of fiction on its head. Whereas normally writers make up stories that follow the normal rules of life, so as to represent reality, magic realism breaks those rules, and in effect uses magic to increase our understanding of life. For this purpose, it ignores the rules of real life, while sometimes introducing actual people and happenings into the text.

The most extreme example of this latter technique in Midnight's Children occurs with the introduction of Indira Gandhi as virtually a character in the novel, identified as the Black Widow, with her real-life hairstyle, sharply distinguished black and white components, being held to represent the contrast between what she presented to the world and its underside. However, I found this aspect of the book the least convincing, and indeed, Indira Gandhi made the limitations of this sort of approach clear when she sued Rushdie, not about the general criticisms, but the insinuation that she had been responsible for the death of her husband.