Please tell me what I'm missing about Midnight's Children

So, I tried reading Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, and I have to say I think it's quite badly written. I feel a little self-conscious saying that because it's such a highly lauded book, I worry I'm making myself look like an idiot. This is, after all, the book that won the "Booker of Bookers".

But here's an example sentence: "A few seconds later, my father broke his big toe; but his accident was a mere trifle when set beside what had befallen me in that benighted moment, because thanks to the occult tyrannies of those blandly saluting clocks I had been mysteriously handcuffed to history, my destinies indissolubly chained to those of my country."

I think Bulwer-Lytton or any number of purple pulp writers would be right at home in that nest of adjectives and adverbs. I mean, I get that it's a magical realist book about India in the 20th century and that's interesting and not something we've seen a lot of (especially when this book was written), but the Booker? And then the Booker of Bookers? Somebody please tell me what am I missing.