Will I love Midnight's Children?

My mother is a member of the exact same generation as Rushdie, kids born at the moment when India gained independence, so I grew up in the shadow of that legacy—the optimism, the violence, the huge historical question mark. But when I picked up Rushdie’s magical-realist novel, it was the prose that spoke to me first: vivid, exaggerated, a cacophony, evoking India itself.

Our narrator, Saleem Sinai, was switched at birth with another child, and throughout the novel, images and phrases recur in different contexts. Often, these are puns that, by the second or third time they appear, have accumulated… show more.

I am a historian by day. But I have always believed that artists—whether writers, painters, or musicians—capture the human experience of history and, moreover, convey it in an enduring form for future generations far more effectively than historians. 

Historians have to present a single line of analysis or argument, which inevitably and properly makes events of a particular historical period meaningful to the particular moment in time when they are writing. A true artist can transcend both of those times. In my view, Rushdie’s book achieves that for the period, or generation, after Indian independence in 1947.

I have lived… show more.

This is probably my most-read book: It’s lyrical, lush, funny, and tragic. I come back to it whenever I feel like I’m in a reading rut. It may not be for everyone.

The narrator, Saleem Sinai, born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, India’s independence day from Britain, delivers a beautiful, meandering narrative about his family and his own life, which mirrors India’s history, and the other children of midnight—all imbued with different magical powers.

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.