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Book Review On "Midnight's Children": Presented By

Salman Rushdie's 1981 novel Midnight's Children won the Booker Prize. The novel is a allegory for events in India around its independence and partition in 1947. It tells the story of Saleem Sinai, who was born at the exact moment of India's independence and was endowed with telepathic powers. Saleem discovers other children born around midnight also have special abilities. The novel examines India's history and culture through magical realism and the lives of its children as the country develops after independence.

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318 views7 pages

Book Review On "Midnight's Children": Presented By

Salman Rushdie's 1981 novel Midnight's Children won the Booker Prize. The novel is a allegory for events in India around its independence and partition in 1947. It tells the story of Saleem Sinai, who was born at the exact moment of India's independence and was endowed with telepathic powers. Saleem discovers other children born around midnight also have special abilities. The novel examines India's history and culture through magical realism and the lives of its children as the country develops after independence.

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nnreddi
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Book review on

“midnight’s children”
By Salman Rushdie

Presented by :-

OMKAR SINGH (OT - A10)


ADR-CSS (HYD) – 2015
About the Author
Born on 19 June 1947.
His second novel, Midnight’s children (1981), won the
Booker prize in 1981.
Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of
Literature, Britain's senior literary organization, in 1983.
Midnight’s Children was awarded the “Booker of Bookers"
Prize and the best all-time prize winners in 1993 and 2008.
 In June 2007, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him for his
services to literature.
 In 2008, The Times ranked him thirteenth on its list of the
fifty greatest British writers since 1945.
Background
 Midnight's Children is a loose allegory for events in India both before and,
primarily, after the independence and partition of india. The protagonist
and narrator of the story is saleem sinai, born at the exact moment when
India became an independent country. He was born with telepathic
powers, as well as an enormous and constantly dripping nose with an
extremely sensitive sense of smell. The novel is divided into three books.
 The book begins with the story of the Sinai family, particularly with
events leading up to India's Independence and Partition. Saleem is born
precisely at midnight, August 15, 1947, therefore, exactly as old as the
independent republic of India. He later discovers that all children born in
India between 12 a.m. and 1 a.m. on that date are imbued with special
powers. Saleem, using his telepathic powers, assembles a Midnight
Children's Conference, reflective of the issues India faced in its early
statehood concerning the cultural, linguistic, religious, and political
differences faced by a vastly diverse nation. Saleem acts as a telepathic
conduit, bringing hundreds of geographically disparate children into
contact while also attempting to discover the meaning of their gifts. In
particular, those children born closest to the stroke of midnight wield
more powerful gifts than the others. Shiva "of the Knees", Saleem's
nemesis, and Parvati, called "Parvati-the-witch," are two of these children
with notable gifts and roles in Saleem's story.
Continue…..
 Meanwhile, Saleem's family begin a number of migrations and endure
the numerous wars which plague the subcontinent. During this period
he also suffers amnesia until he enters a quasi-mythological exile in the
jungle of Sundarban, where he is re-endowed with his memory. In
doing so, he reconnects with his childhood friends. Saleem later
becomes involved with the Indira Gandhi -proclaimed Emergency and
her son Sanjay’s cleansing of Jamma Masjid. For a time Saleem is held
as a political prisoner; these passages contain scathing criticisms of
Indira Gandhi's overreach during the Emergency as well as a personal
lust for power bordering on godhood. The Emergency signals the end
of the potency of the Midnight Children, and there is little left for
Saleem to do but pick up the few pieces of his life he may still find and
write the chronicle that encompasses both his personal history and
that of his still-young nation; a chronicle written for his son, who, like
his father, is both chained and supernaturally endowed by history.
Analysis
 The technique of magical realism finds liberal expression throughout the novel
and is crucial to constructing the parallel to the country's history. The story
moves in different parts of Indian Subcontinent – from Kashmir to Agra and
then to Bombay (now, Mumbai), Lahore, Dhaka. This self-referential narrative
(within a single paragraph Saleem refers to himself in the first person: ″And I,
wishing upon myself the curse of Nadir Khan." and the third: "'I tell you,'
Saleem cried, 'it is true. ...' recalls indigenous Indian culture. The events in
Rushdie's text also parallel the magical nature of the narratives recounted
in Arabian Nights (consider the attempt to electrocute Saleem at the latrine, or
his journey in the 'basket of invisibility')." He also notes that, "the narrative
comprises and compresses Indian cultural history. 'Once upon a time,' Saleem
muses, 'there were Radha and Krishna, and Rama and Sita, and Laila and
Majnun; also (because we are not unaffected by the West) Romeo and Juliet,
and Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn," . Midnight's
Children chronologically entwines characters from both India and the West,
"with post-colonial Indian history to examine both the effect of these
indigenous and non-indigenous cultures on the Indian mind and in the light of
Indian independence."
Other Novel

Grimus (1975)
Midnight's Children (1981)
Shame (1983)
The Satanic Verses (1988)
The Moor's Last Sigh (1995)
The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999)
Fury (2001)
Shalimar the Clown (2005)
The Enchantress of Florence (2008)
Thank You

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