Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

[yati]

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
First published 1981
462 pages

Midnight's Children is the story of Saleem Sinai, who was born exactly at midnight on the day of India's Independence. Also featured: his extraordinary nose and its special powers. The book is a mixture of history and magical realism, paralleling Saleem's growth as a person and India's growth as a nation.

This book won the Booker Prize in 1981, and won the Best of the Booker prize in 2008 to celebrate the Booker Prize's 40th anniversary. It was also named to Booker of Bookers for the prize's 25th anniversary in 1993. With that many Bookers to its name I had high expectations of this book!

It didn't disappoint, though I wouldn't put it in my favourite books of all time lists. I learned quite a bit about India along the way, and it was interesting how similar and different our cultures are, and the political climate of the post-colonial era just after Independence.

This review is in response to the questions posted here. Let's just skip me rambling and get straight to those.


» From louspages.blogspot.com: Was the Salman Rushdie book difficult to read?

Not really. Though the writing style might be a bit cumbersome, especially at the start. The narrator doubles backs on his narrative quite few times, and doesn't necessarily tell things in sequence. He refers to future events in the narrative and almost tells you about them, and then he decides not to because you need to know a lot of other things first before knowing a person (or something to that effect). He refers to his own birth, for example, but keeps going back to the story of his grandfather and how the blue Kashmiri sky bled into his eyes at the start of the book, and you find yourself stuck with his grandfather for a while. Not that this, or the writing, is bad -- just that it may make for frustrating reading for the first few pages. I found myself reading the book very, very slowly.

Some background on India's history would help you understand the events better.


» From an anonymous commenter: Is Midnight’s Children a controversial novel?

I don't think it is. Then again, I am not really well-read when it comes to the Indian subcontinent's history, so I can't really say how controversial or not any of the elements in the book are.

Perhaps you are thinking of The Satanic Verses, also by Salman Rushdie? That one was certainly controversial, though I haven't read it myself. Last time I checked, it was still banned in my country! Which I think is stupid, and I am generally against banning and censorship. Friends who have read the book didn't think much of it, and many think it's well-known as it is because of the bans, not despite them.



Ta-da. There you go, my first review(ish) post of the year.


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