World

Rushdie novel filmed in secret

12:47 pm on 20 May 2011

A screen adaptation of Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children has finished filming in secret in Sri Lanka.

Production was suspended after Iran complained to Sri Lanka, but President Mahinda Rajapaksa overturned the ban.

Director Deepa Mehta said she chose the location over India or Pakistan, where the story is set, to avoid protests from religious groups.

The BBC reports cast and crew members had to sign confidentiality agreements.

Mr Rushdie was the target of a fatwa from Iran for his novel The Satanic Verses. Ms Mehta's films have angered Hindus.

''He (Rushdie) has got the Muslims. And I've got the Hindus,'' she told the Globe & Mail newspaper in Canada.

Midnight's Children deals with pre- and post-independent India. It tells the story of Saleem Sinai, who was born on the stroke of Indian independence day in 1947.

The novel won the 1981 Booker prize and was chosen as the ''Booker of Bookers'' in 1993.

The film will be released next year as Winds of Change.