Rushdie SCREENPLAY MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN 1999 Signe

Title: The Screenplay of Midnight's Children: Adapted from His Novel and with an Introduction
Author: Salman Rushdie
Publisher: Vintage
Printing Year: 1999 Signed first printing

Condition/Details: Bound in wrappers, this volume is a scarce signed copy of the adaptation of Rushdie's novel, a book that has twice been declared the "Booker of Bookers", the best book to win the Booker Prize in its first 25, and then this last July its first 40 years. It was first published in 1981 and adapted to the stage by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2003. The following account of that staging, taken from Time Magazine (Jan. 5, 2003), conveys a sense of some of the issues involved in adapting this novel: " "It's got a lot of action in it," Rushdie says of his book, "almost too much. The main problem was how to condense it to three hours. To tell it complete, we'd really need about 15!" The book spans three generations and includes hundreds of characters. The hero, Saleem Sinai, narrates the connected stories of himself and his family and, along the way, the turbulent political history of India between 1915 and 1979. Rushdie had originally written a five-hour screenplay for a bbc mini-series. But his own personal story intruded. In 1989, Iran's Ayatullah Khomeini issued a fatwa against him after declaring his book The Satanic Verses disrespectful to the Koran. The author was forced into hiding for nine years, and the mini-series was doomed. The Indian government deemed it too risky to be filmed in Bombay; Sri Lanka gave permission, then changed its mind. The project lay dormant until Rushdie was approached by the RSC. They'd seen director Supple's 1998 production of another Rushdie work, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, at the Royal National Theatre, and were keen to bring the two men together again. Supple, who worked on the stage adaptation with Rushdie and Simon Reade, says they wrestled with the scale of the book: "We had to make it clear, vivid, exciting and simple enough to play onstage." In the end, they had to lose several important characters and memorable scenes — including one of co-adapter Reade's favorites, where Saleem visits Tibibi, the oldest whore in the world."The volume shows light external age/wear, and is solidly bound with clean pages. The book measures approximately 5" x 7.75" and contains 308 pages. Shipping cost (within the U.S.) for this lot will be: $4.50