Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #365 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-03
• 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.

Daily Telegraph, James Walton
'the result is a book that feels not unlike anything written before, but also anything written since...it's exhilirating'

Metro
'a masterpiece of post-colonial literature'

Customer Reviews

A book to go in any long or short list of master pieces
What can I say about midnight's children that has not already been said. I would put it on par with one hundred years of solitude. You have to read it to know what I am talking about.

Exciting
Despite what some reviewers have said about this book I must say that I found it easy to get into. The characters are all so beautifully described with such fabulously intriguing details. The settings made me want to go to India. And as a book about India I enjoyed this enormously.
The parts set in Pakistan were more difficult for me. I really would have preferred the character to have stayed in India because I think that the book loses something by being transported suddenly to Pakistan.
I very rarely agree with the Booker Prize as being a good barometer of literary efforts, in fact I can barely think of one book that has won it that I have actually liked, but this book is something different. Perhaps just a bit too much of that 'magical realism' (sorry to people who like that).
A great read, but not perfect.

hype = a lot of hot air
I was so excited when I first saw this book. A magic realist story about India? With politics, intrigue and tons of hype? Yes please!

But it turned out that the hype was just that: hype. I like my books long and involved, but this book could have been written in half the words used - never a good sign. The main character was irritating in the extreme, the language lacked clarity, and the entire style reeked of self-importance in a way that just made me want to bash my head (or better yet, the book) against something hard.

I'll be honest. I do my very best never to hate a book; they all have their redeeming qualities. And it is clear that Salman Rushdie put a lot of painstaking care and effort into the research behind Midnight's Children, and into the plot itself. An english literature undergrad once told me that it is technically brilliantly structured (I don't know why, but I'll take her word for it). So, if you're focus is more on the structure and research of a novel rather than the characters or readability, go ahead and read it. But frankly it just isn't my cup of tea.