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Summary: Midnight's children
Review: Amazing book. I would recommend it to anyone travelling to India or visiting it. It provides a rich literary experience and adds a touch of "masala" to an ingenious and rare story.
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Summary: Long, but enjoyable
Review: Rushdie is obviously a master writer and shows his skills in this long, expansive and creative piece. I'm a fan of the magical historical fiction style and have read Marquez and plan to read Grass soon; not a big fan but I like the style well enough. I wish it was book a bit shorter (I am a slow reader), but the scope and range of the work (from tragedy to comedy and back) along with it's historical reach make it a very good read. Whip out your dictionary on this work too, it certainly expanded my vocabulary.
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Summary: Borges, Marquez and Rushdie
Review: This is one of the absolute masterpieces - and comparisions to 100 years and the works of Borges are inevitable because of the use of magic realism. However, it differs from works of Marquez in 100 years because his style is not as controlled and the flow of word play is more abundant, creating a riot of colours and smells - which overwhelm you even more if you were born in a large indian city in the 60s or 70s. A note to appreciate this book - please read up just a bit of indian history from independence to the late 80s - i guarantee you'll enjoy this book substantially more if you do so. Rushdie is not Joyce - and you can easily get the incredible wordplays and metaphors with a half hour homework before reading Midnight's Children. Happy reading.
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Summary: A supurb piece of fiction
Review: A stylishly written masterpiece that chronicles the life of the narrator and parrallells it with the independence of India. Saleem Sinai is born in Bombay at the very moment of India's independence from Britain. Fortunately for Saleem he is switched at birth with Shiva, his alter ego, and raised by wealthy Muslim parents. Shiva in turn is raised as a Hindu pauper. Saleem, although physically imperfect, shares fantastic paranormal abilities with the other 1001 children born during the first hour of India's independence. Midnight's Children, as they call themselves, can communicate telepathically, however, Saleem and Shiva are blessed with abilities that are even more advanced than the other Children of Midnight. The two of them vie for leadership within the midnight childrens conferences. After Saleem finds out the circumstances of their birth, he unsuccessfully attempts tries to hide these facts from Shiva. Once Shiva finds out the truth he and begins to plot his revenge. Rushdie masterfully interweaves the events of Saleem's life with those historical events that occurred during the first thirty years of India's independence; including wars with China and Pakistan and the fromation of Bangladesh. He introduces a plethera of unique and fascinating characters who epitomize the diversity of the region. The language is a bastardized English, combining the King's English, ancient Hindi,Persian and varoius regional dialects. Rushdie does his best at giving the reader a glimpse of just how complicated India is with its different religions and customs.The humor is very tongue in cheek and prevelant throughout. Rushdie uses variations of spelling and punctuation to accentuate his drama and humour.
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Summary: Encountering India and the Author
Review: Salman Rushdie is a celebrity writer, so I approach his work with a heavy amount of skepticism. Many times, authors fail to live up to their fans' praises or their enemy's condemnations. But Rushdie resists my attempts to dismiss him as an author whose success hinges solely on inflated emotions. Midnight's Children deals with some time shortly before and after India obtained its independence from England. The novel leads slowly to the birth of its narrator, Saleem Sinai, who, incidentally, is born at midnight on the first day of an independent India. After an incident in a hamper, Saleem's nose bestows him with a magical ability to communicate with all other Indian children born in the first hour of India's independent birth. Hence, "Midnight's Children." Rushdie's characters parody those found in certain sacred texts, so the derision he draws form religious figures is no surprise. Mary and Joseph appear in the story. But Joseph is a terrorist, and Mary, well, I do not want to give away that surprise. She makes excellent chutney. The novel repeats frequently, for a purpose. In order to produce a magical-realist allegory, Rushdie must iterate things over and over again until he has persuaded the reader of the correspondences between the quotidian and the privileged narrative of history. Saleem's frequent interruptions in the narrative serve both implicitly and explicitly as moments of self-reflection. A text that is self-aware and admits to its own faults is one that allows space for criticism and even invites it. It is a sophisticated and mature authorship to deny one's own authorial power. Midnight's Children is especially useful for literature students looking for a fictional narrative of India's independence and struggle for self-identity. He presents Saleem Sinai's India, and consequently, calls into question the privilege of so-called "objective histories." Might the truest histories, in fact, be the "subjective" stories of the common people? Even though the novel is fiction, it presents an extremely personal view of India's tumultuous post-colonial history.
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Summary: Midnight's Children
Review: Rushdie is a true master with a skill for story telling that not many can match. This book is not to be missed by those who care about politics and how people are affected by it on an everyday level. And as I have never yet been to India, I feel like I have already visited surrounded by it's sites & smells. I can't wait to read more of his works!
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Summary: Enchanting
Review: I am still afraid to get another book by Rushdie in fear that I will be disappointed. The Midnight Chldren is funny, warm and very touching, at the same time providing the reader with plenty of food for thought.
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Summary: Rushdie's "Booker of Bookers" is a rare masterpiece !
Review: Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" has been honoured by book critics as the "Booker of Bookers" and no wonder ! It's one of the most original, brilliant and stunning novels I have read in years. How apt too that Rushdie's technique or genre of writing should be described as "magical realism", for MC dresses the telling of post-war Indian history with so much fun, humour and imagination from references drawn from such a deep ancient well, your senses reel from the rush and cultural overload. Granted, Rushdie's method with language doesn't make for easy or casual reading. Words meticulously chosen, assembled and invested with meaning tumble helter skelter onto the pages in dazzling and colourful rapid fire prose - "stream of consciousness" style - you really need to concentrate to understand and savour its riches. Its huge cast of characters evoke the sense of a grand pantheon of gods overlooking the lives of its divided people. Not surprisingly, these same gods (or God) - depending on whether you're Hindu or Muslim - connive to coincide births, deaths and marriages and the mercurial fate of these "midnight's children" who come from disparate social and religious backgrounds with the making of history. The use of the "switched-at-birth good Saleem/bad Shiva" as a central motif in the novel is also a masterful stroke conveying both irony and plurality that characterises India. "Midnight's Children" is one of those important novels that just has to be read by everyone who loves serious fiction. I'd be willing to bet that it'll get on the reading list of every literature student, if it hasn't already done so. A rare and genuine masterpiece. Make time to read it. You will be richly rewarded.
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Summary: Smell the chutney.
Review: Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" appears to be an allegory, spiced with satirical commentary, on the political course of modern India and the in-fighting of its various social and religious factions. It is an endlessly inventive book with a cheeky sense of humor and wild, exotic imagery, but it does not eschew somber moments. Rushdie presents this novel as the autobiography of Saleem Sinai, writing from his current residence at a Bombay pickle factory under the critical eye of his frequently interruptive lover/fiance Padma. Saleem was born on the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the precise moment of India's independence from Great Britain and Pakistan's formation. He and one thousand other babies (the Midnight's Children) born in India throughout the hour each has some supernatural power such as witchcraft, time travel, gender alteration, etc., or otherwise is simply a mutant. Kind of like the X-Men, except they're too self-serving to band together and fight crime (and too bad, as there is a lot of narrative potential in this idea). Saleem routinely hides in a washing-chest in his house to find inner peace away from neighborhood kids who taunt him for his large misshapen nose and other odd facial features. One day in the chest, he has a strange accident -- he sniffs a pajama cord up his nose, triggering an effect which causes him to hear voices in his head and realize he has telepathic powers. By telepathy, he establishes communication with the (heretofore unknown to him) other Midnight's Children, but they prove unwilling to unite. An operation performed on his nose to stop his severe dripping snot problem clears his nasal passages to reveal an uncanny olfactory ability, enabling him to sniff out emotions and ideas as well as smells. Saleem also gives an extensive background on his family, beginning with how his maternal grandparents met, up to his pyromaniac-turned-singing-star younger sister. After his (Muslim) family relocates to Pakistan, almost all of them are killed in the 1965 India-Pakistan war, and in the 1971 war for the independence of Bangladesh, Saleem is conscripted in the Pakistani Army as a human bloodhound. Eventually, Saleem marries Parvati, one of the Midnight's Children, the witch, who bears a child fathered by his arch enemy Shiva, another of the Midnight's Children, whose special attribute is his ability to crush people with his overdeveloped knees. Shiva works as an agent for the government of India, who demand to know the indentities and whereabouts of all the Midnight's Children, and Saleem is the only one who can tell them... Like E.L. Doctorow's "Ragtime," "Midnight's Children" blurs the line between historical fact and fiction, weaving fantastic events against a realistic backdrop of a land in turmoil. Saleem is an extraordinary character, not a hero in the traditional sense but a deformed symbol, a vessel for carrying and displaying the problems and hopes of the people of India.
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Summary: Pickled History
Review: Saleem is born at midnight at the very moment India gains its independence. Thus, he is connected to his nation right from the start, as are the 1001 children born during that magical hour. Saleem sets out to preserve his story and finds he cannot separate his history from his country's history. Nor can he leave out the stories of the other children of midnight. Rushdi's book is long and complex, and sometimes it is tough to get through. However, it is not one of Penguin's Great Books of the 20th Century without reason. It is an analysis of self and nation and history and truth. An excellent work of fiction, to say the least.
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