Product Description

Born at the stroke of midnight at the exact moment of India's independence, Saleem Sinai is a special child. However, this coincidence of birth has consequences he is not prepared for: telepathic powers connect him with 1,000 other 'midnight's children' all of whom are endowed with unusual gifts. Inextricably linked to his nation, Saleem's story is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirrors the course of modern India at its most impossible and glorious.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1090 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 672 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Before Salman Rushdie had that problem with a certain religious-political figure with a serious need to chill out, he'd already shown he was an important literary force. Quite simply, Midnight's Children is amazing--fun, beautiful, erudite, both fairy tale and political narrative told through a supernatural narrator who is caught between different worlds. Though it's a big book, with big themes of India's nationhood and of ethnic and personal identity, it's far from a dry history lesson. Rushdie tells the story in his own brand of magical realism, with a prose of lyrical, transcendent goofiness.

Guardian
'in a shortlist that will produce what the public judge to be the greatest booker prize winner of all time'

Metro
'a masterpiece of post-colonial literature'

Customer Reviews

Rich and beautiful but too cold for me.
The language is as multi-layered and detailed as a Klimt, the imagery, rich and dense as Christmas cake - there's no doubt Midnight's Children is a unique and remarkable book, but I found, at it's core, it was too coldly detached. I never truly connected to Saleem or any of the characters, or the epic, grasshopper story. I was always slightly outside his world, looking in through closed blinds.

Some books - the books that live on in my mind long after - are the ones that embrace you, wrap you in a warm, soft blanket of themselves and draw you in completely and, awed though I was by the literary achievement (and it is an incredible tour de force, almost certainly deserving the over-used `genius' tag) I could never count it amongst my favourites.

It *is*a fantastical, magical, delight of a book. I did like it very much and thoroughly recommend it as a must read for almost everyone really but especially anyone who loves magical realism and vast, epic fantasy worlds. It's clearly a masterpiece - but I doubt very much if I shall want to read it again anytime soon.

Disappointing and dull
It's hard to live up to the "Booker of Bookers" tag but this comes nowhere near. Rushdie can write: bursts of compelling narrative display that. Unfortunately the whole story is trussed up in that clever "flash-back", "flash-forward" conceit which eventually bored me. No, I didn't finish it. I got a little further than I did with Ulysses, but eventually hurled this into the same Pseud Bin.
I've read somewhere that the author intends the time switching to be like the digressions of an oral storyteller but I think that's like trying to capture ballet in a poem or the moon in a bucket. The device is overused and tiresome. Want a Third World Magic Realism Family Saga? try "House of the Spirits".

An important, and dare I say enjoyable read
Whatever controversies arise from Rushdie one cannot but marvel at the depths of his imagination. Midnight's Children whilst containing some of the most beautiful language and imagery is no easy read. As with most Rushdie novels we venture into the world of magic realism and we witness the life of a child born on the stroke of midnight hour when Nehru announces the "tryst with dynasty". Born with special powers Saleem is witness through the whirlwind of events that make up India's first thirty years and we see his attempted interfering. Again with Rushdie's novels we're unable to sympathise with any of the characters but nevertheless the strength of the writing keeps us plodding through.