1001+ Books: Midnight's Children

1001+ Books:

#4 - Midnight's Children

by: Salman Rushdie (1981)

       This is a book to fall in love with, a book to enwrap yourself in, to be experienced, to be led along by the hand by into the twirling, fantastic world it creates with it's spiraling, whirling, and magical prose. It is a book of many things into one thing, a story of scale colossal and detail minute, which relishes in its telling and confounds in the same likeness as well. It is a story of India, and of one boys importance in the story, and his family, and the 1001 children of midnight, and a perforated sheet, and a lapis encrusted silver spittoon, and a nose and knees, knees and a nose, and love, and hate, and death, and hope, and magicians, and 500 year old whores, and smelly old boat men, and all the many other things that make up the wide world.

       Saleem Sinai, who was born on the stroke of midnight, at the exact moment of India's independence, is the narrator and ultimate focus of the novel. But the book goes far beyond him into his parents and grandparents histories, and also the history and prehistory of his country, mirroring each other throughout their developments in time. It is encompassing of many things, but overall it is about families and connections, and histories which leak throughout them. Immensely enjoyable in its characters and story, especially in its complete insight into said characters thoughts, feelings, and lives. A book as rich as India herself, and as colorful and alive as well. 

   Rating: A-