Salman RushdieMidnight's Children

Midnight’s Children could be called a not so distant cousin of A Thousand Years of Solitude. It stands on its own, of course, but what I mean is that there is a world, an epic, a history all inscribed within the pages of both novels. Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County would be an American equivalent.Midnight’s Children is regarded as so essential to Indian literature that South Asian critics regularly describe eras as pre and post Rushdie.If you haven’t read it, it tells the story of India, from just before Independence into the Indira Gandhi era, through the allegorical fictional events that occur to its protagonist. As a conceit, it’s brilliant —both in terms of originality and execution.Those who remember or know about this era in Indian history will not be surprised by its cynical tone. Everything from Indian religions to politics to the economy is subject to subtle, and not so subtle, ridicule. Perhaps if Rushdie were to write about India in the twenty first century this would have been a completely different work.But as Rushdie says, the temptation to write history as we wish and not how it was is simply that—a temptation. The difficult beginnings of the modern Indian state cannot be swept under the proverbial rug.However, it’s a book worth reading beyond those interested in South Asian studies. The play between the disasters of the hero and the disasters of India actually reach beyond the subcontinent to achieve universal resonance. I personally didn’t like the digs at religion and the dark humor employed in describing mass suffering, but these are matters on which mature readers will differ. Paradoxically, I believe, that as India becomes a richer and more powerful nation, this work describing the trauma of its youth will become only more and more important. It doesn’t need any props from me, but still highly recommended.

This book is a mostly enjoyable, lengthy character study of generations of an eccentric south Asian Indian family. The main character is a classic unreliable narrator as his story weaves through major events in politics and history and minor personal success and tragedy with similar incredulity. He’s a Cyrano-like figure among a host of other unique individuals, gifted with a keen sense of smell and a miraculous telepathic connection to a collective of other minds. His story is a dense meandering through Indian culture, studded with tangents adding color and context to the main plot. It took me a long time to finish this book, after several periods of putting it down. There’s a primal, raw humanity described here, which I could absorb only in measured doses. Still, it was an enjoyable read with a distinct voice and point of view.

In a novel that attempts to swallow the whole of post-colonial India, Rushdie’s protagonist doesn’t just encounter her culture, politics, religions, myths, and wars: he lives them. Saleem Sinai sniffs out his predestined path, enhanced by his magical birthright, and divulges the spectral smells of the subcontinent. But not even he, the Blessed One—the Mubarak—can contain in his single life the multifarious identity of India’s six hundred million. Attempting it, he hazards tragedy and eventually—disintegration.”To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.”Rushdie’s lengthy epic seems to convey a vivid sense of India’s history through the fictitious autobiography of his self-similar protagonist. However, for those of us unfamiliar with the events portrayed, Saleem’s tour of history loses some of its magic—for the same reasons that the film “Forrest Gump” will languish over the decades. Nonetheless, the clever and self-reflective narrator carries us through the pages, which drip with the mysteries of memory and identity.”memory has its own special kind [of truth]. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else’s version more than his own.”Rushdie does not shy away from the truth of his character’s perspectives. His bravery won him a Booker prize for this novel (but it also led to an attempt on his life for another book—”The Satanic Verses”). Expect no censorship here. This is, indeed, Saleem Sinai’s true story. It might be lacking in compassion and climax, but it compensates with scope and profound insight:”I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I’ve gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in the matter; each ‘I’, every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you’ll have to swallow a world.”

The scope, breadth, and depth of the narrative and how it weaves historical events is fascinating and was worth the read. I also appreciate the more supernatural elements and the sort of "coincidences" that happen to us all. I just finished this and was, frankly, not happy to have to stop at chapter ends because I had to go to bed and get up for my mundane work-a-day BS.I certainly understand the criticism about the number of minor characters, and the international "waffle" complaint - if anything the "I must, I musn't, I MUST" stuff is the most irritating because of how recurring it is but that's a minor quibble and I'm not taking stars off for that.Great from start to finish. I bought this and a couple other works after reading an NYT piece about another assassination attempt on Mr. Rushdie - my only familiarity with him being from Christopher Hitchen's defense of him in old religious debates.I bought a brand new copy, and the shipping dented some of the corner edges. If anything, I'd take a star for that but I don't feel that's fair to the author, and it's a paperback anyway.

I read Midnight’s Children as it’s one of those books on all those lists of books one should read. I grew up with this book featuring in the news and in the papers and I think I must have built up some kind of legend around it, thought of it as too weighty, too hard, too important to be a reading experience I could immerse myself in. I’m glad I gave it a go. Yes, it still feels important but it’s a good read. It’s a clever mix of history, magical realism and family saga. It’s true escapism at times and horrifying reality at others.Despite the multitudinous characters and the incredible vocabulary, I followed the narrative, the themes, the imagery and it didn’t feel like hard work. I liked the element of an unreliable narrator and the references to storytelling, whose truth is passed on, what we choose to reveal, what we embellish, what we forget or misremember. Padma’s role was key to grounding things and sometimes speaking my own thoughts out loud.It’s epic and has taken me an absolute age to read, maybe because it’s so dense. Maybe because I’m an idiot. Feeling stupid can be humbling though and there’s value to be found in wading slowly through a well thought out novel rather than zooming through a trashy novel. Was it necessary to use a little used fancy word in place of something that would be more accessible and easy to read? It’s a writer’s book not a marketing brochure or piece of journalism so yes, there is absolutely a place on my bookshelves for work that challenges me, opens my mind, introduces new vocabulary.I often write notes on books as I read them but with Midnight’s Children I just soaked it all up. Knowing it’s often a set text made me wary of over analysing as I read it. Studying English Literature in university momentarily killed my devouring of fiction. Over analysing killed the enjoyment of it and the looming essays tainted my reading time. Not so now.Reading the one star reviews on here I’d say that clearly it’s not for everyone, if you’re looking for a page turning historical romp, this is not it. It’s a different genre. It put me in mind of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez literary vibe.

Not for me. I have persevered until 35% through. Is all the waffle an Indian thing at the time it is set? I have no idea, I cannot follow the waffle and have no interest in the waffle. If that is an Indian thing, that is fine - no problem - just put a warning on the tin. I am sure that if I had the patience to read through and ignore the vast pages of waffle, it might actually be a good story, but as it is, I am losing the will to live and so will henceforth forever be oblivious to the outcome of Saleem whoever and the Midnight Children. I will not even be curious. It will be gone and forgotten except to remind me never to bother reading Salmon Rushdie again. Sorry, but there it is.Salmon Rushdie is not in bad company here. I have no patience for Jane Austin, any of the Bronte's, William Shakespeare and most of all Sir Walter Scott - they all wrote in older centuries and not in a familiar style, so there could be a bit of a pattern here. Not my accustomed language, not to my taste.I gave it a fair trial, it just didn't tickle my imagination.Sorry

This winner of the "Booker of Bookers" is a difficult book to read, and a far more difficult one to rate. It frustrated me to no end with the meandering narrative that required me to re-re-read several paragraphs quite frequently and an unusual literary style that challenged my comprehension. The only motivation for me to persevere with it was the magic Mr. Rushdie has made with the words; almost every sentence from this book is eminently quotable!It certainly demands another reading, which I hope to give it, in the not-far-away future.

Ok, it is not an easy read but then again its not a hard read, it just happens to be a brilliant work of fiction that requires some perseverance, mainly to accept the magical realism that twines around the historical and personal stories. Rushdie is certainly a Marmite author, in this work his storytelling gifts are outstanding and his language at times elaborate and meandering, but for me thats the challenge and beauty of his style. The display of imagination in structuring the tale is breathtaking and whilst the pace slows at times, it hangs together to keep the pages turning. My advice would be to give it a go, if it works for you then you'll have discovered a gem, if it doesnt then at least you can constructively critique the most famous Booker of them all.

I managed to read it after concerted effort, it isn't entertaining in any way in my opinion, it builds up stories to an anticlimax every single time. The fantasy bit to me is very unimaginative it is weirdly mixed up with historical information. I could not pick up on any ethical lessons, some seemingly important actions were followed by nothing. to me this book was one of the hardest and most frustrating to read, and I will admit I only gave it a chance due to how prized and praised it is.