Midnight's Children

This book was my introduction to magical realism when I studied it as part of my English Literature Degree (more years ago than I care to admit). Salman Rushdie wasn’t so well known in those days, but I fell in love with his trademark wry, dark humour straight away and ended up writing my Honours thesis about it. 

It's a stunning take on the partition of India in 1947. The novel explores those themes that always speak to me: the wielding of power, oppression, justice, and the role of the individual caught in historical forces over which they have no… show more.

I read my grandfather’s copy of this novel as a teenager. I perhaps lacked the emotional and intellectual maturity to appreciate its various nuances but I remember the story vividly almost 30 years on because I read it with a schoolgirl’s attentiveness rather than the jaded distraction that comes with age.

The intricate plot about the birth of children coinciding with the birth of the nation and the magic and the farce of what follows in their lives – as well as the nation’s – helped me develop an appetite for grand narratives where language is as much a character… show more.

For me, this was the book that started it all. It’s a riotous, messy, fable-like story about a group of children born at the moment of India’s independence who are, as a result of their connection with their country’s history, given telepathic powers. Written in Rushdie’s propulsive digressive style, the book covers decades of history in a sweep of magic. 

Along with Gabriel García Márquez, Sir Salman Rushdie has had a profound impact on the way I write. He doesn’t know this of course, as he very likely hasn’t the faintest idea who I am!

I grant you that he looks like a crusty old apothecarist from an Arabian Nights story, but Sir Salman always brings the fun, and his rascally playfulness is evident on every page.

Rushdie’s picturesque writing style is revered the world over; so, if you are in love with the alchemy of words and are willing to stargaze at the brilliance of a magical realism author… show more.

I frequently teach Rushdie and this is his best book. Winner of the Booker Prize, Midnight’s Children is a playful epic novel that uses magic elements to tell the tale of India’s independence from British colonization in the mid-20th century. Through a first-person disabled narrator, it potentially adds to readers’ imaginative engagement with disability. Matters are complicated, though, because of narrator Saleem’s claims of having fantastic telepathic powers might actually make it harder for readers to identify with him. The novel depicts disability in complex ways, where disabled people simultaneously are powerful figures who offer hope for the newly… show more.

I left India for grad school in the U.S. at age 21 and a friend gave me this novel two weeks before I left the city. Reading it made me want to never leave because Rushdie took the dusty, dirty, chaotic city of my birth and gave it a new shine in his mad carnival of a novel. I was a product of an Anglophile education—this was the first time I could recognize the names of the streets he wrote about. Rushdie employs elements of magical realism and the Hinglish vernacular to paint a vivid picture of India from the… show more.

Midnight’s Children is one of my favourite novels ever. During the first hour of August 15, 1947, as British-ruled India achieves its independence, children across the subcontinent are born with a variety of paranormal gifts. The narrative follows the interactions and conflicts among these children as they come of age in the fractious early years of post-independence India and Pakistan. The story is compelling, and, because it’s Rushdie, who is himself so gifted, the supernatural world-building is rock solid.

In Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie takes a real point in history – when India becomes independent at midnight on August 15, 1947 – and turned it into a magical event. At the same time that India is born into its own country, 1,000 children are born with magical gifts. These magical children’s lives are often connected to the history of their nation, which in itself, is such a cool concept. I loved that Rushdie helps us understand a new country and its people through the lives of his characters. His writing and storytelling are beautiful. I know you’ll think… show more.

This was on my reading list as part of my studies for a degree in English Literature. I became completely absorbed in the characters and the way their story unfolded – each born at midnight on the night of India’s partition. I really enjoyed the meandering journey of the narrative, let yourself follow without questioning it! The story is an allegory of India’s transition, and I learned a lot about India’s history, prior to this I had been ignorant of how Pakistan had been formed, and the way in which ordinary people were uprooted from their homes, how communities who… show more.

This novel deals with the partition of the Indian subcontinent and the birth of India, related by an unreliable and unstable narrator. Rushdie’s style, the coinage of new terms, and the mix of myth and history, reminiscent of, and likely, indebted to Borges, is the perfect vehicle to describe the tumultuous birth of a nation while cautioning about unfettered nationalism and unforeseen fractures. Throughout the novel, Saleem seeks, through his fevered mind, to understand and to explain to the reader, this new nation, the home into which he has been propelled.