First Sentence

"The incipit of Midnight's Children, with its tale of a "clock-ridden birth" and its ironically orientalised portrayal of the midnight hour ("blandly saluting clocks", "clock-hands join[ing] palms in respectful greeting", Rushdie 1982: 9) is a hybrid creation and an implicit homage paid to Laurence Sterne: it is an Indian appropriation of the famously "clock-ridden" opening chapters of Tristram Shandy."