Midnight's children (Salman Rushdie)

The story of Saleem Sinai - the whole Sinai family in fact - throughout the history of India.
Saleem is born on the stroke of midnight, on the very night of independence from Britain: this blesses him with the gift of telepathy and allows him to create a special relationship will all such children around the country.
Although he is sure to be meant for greater things, he immediately starts his own decline down a path of disgregation and loss, exactely as India falls from the grace of brighter days.

You only get to know Saleem around page 200, yet the first parts of the book are intersting and lively with "Bombay-talkie" style - Boolywood language, colours, images.
It is towards the end of the book that the story slows down and gets tangled up; repetitions miss their aim, become slightly boring as you wait for something to happen.

For some reasons I thought magic realism was an exclusive of South America, but here it is: Rushdie's style is learned, verbous, rich in images details and "visions and revisions which a minute will reverse".
Rushdie writes from that part of Britishness that flowered from the 50es onwards, when the children of immigrants started telling about a hybrid England - denied until then - with words and imagery borrowed from other cultures.