MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN
HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION
SALMAN RUSHDIE
FIRST PUBLISHED: 1981
FIRST PUBLISHED: 1981
Salman Rushdie was knighted due to
his literary work and this career of his started with Midnight’s children, his
second novel. It was ground-breaking in its treatment of history, memory, and
fantasy. Rushdie used all three avenues in a compendious effort to grapple with
the history of India just before and thirty years after it gained independence
from the British.
It is the biography of Saleem Sinai, a child with psychic and (later) olfactory powers, born on the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947. His destiny is inextricably linked with that of India (this gets reflected in the entire story), the country that gained independence at the exact same time as he did. Saleem quickly establishes himself as an unreliable narrator; he makes factual errors and tells lies. However, he is a very engaging and endearing storyteller because of his humor, his sense of foreshadowing, his unique power and his fallibility.
But the narrative is so jammed with contradictions, digressions, deliberate false steps and insinuations, that it makes it a pretty hard read. It takes in religious issues, Indira Gandhi's repression, the tragedies of partition, the painful birth of Bangladesh, and also, jungles, spices, chutneys, eccentric aunts and uncles, slums, palaces, snake charmers, soldiers and many more mad, bad, dangerous and delightful characters. The women in the book play an important role in Saleem's life and hence become the de-facto architects of Indian history too.
The last two chapters are my personal favorite - bringing out the pain which you must have felt all along for Saleem, in yourself. Some of the best analogies and allegories are included and it is surprising how Saleem’s later life has an uncanny resemblance with that of his former.
The book ends with-
“..it is the privilege and the curse of Midnight’s children to be both masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and to be unable to live or die in peace.”
It is the biography of Saleem Sinai, a child with psychic and (later) olfactory powers, born on the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947. His destiny is inextricably linked with that of India (this gets reflected in the entire story), the country that gained independence at the exact same time as he did. Saleem quickly establishes himself as an unreliable narrator; he makes factual errors and tells lies. However, he is a very engaging and endearing storyteller because of his humor, his sense of foreshadowing, his unique power and his fallibility.
But the narrative is so jammed with contradictions, digressions, deliberate false steps and insinuations, that it makes it a pretty hard read. It takes in religious issues, Indira Gandhi's repression, the tragedies of partition, the painful birth of Bangladesh, and also, jungles, spices, chutneys, eccentric aunts and uncles, slums, palaces, snake charmers, soldiers and many more mad, bad, dangerous and delightful characters. The women in the book play an important role in Saleem's life and hence become the de-facto architects of Indian history too.
The last two chapters are my personal favorite - bringing out the pain which you must have felt all along for Saleem, in yourself. Some of the best analogies and allegories are included and it is surprising how Saleem’s later life has an uncanny resemblance with that of his former.
The book ends with-
“..it is the privilege and the curse of Midnight’s children to be both masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and to be unable to live or die in peace.”
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