A review by rhys_thomas_sparey
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

adventurous challenging funny informative lighthearted reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Stunning. Silly. Amusing. Absurd. Colossal. A sincere feat of literature. Not an easy read, but a rewarding one. To portray four generations of being and their afterlives and their legacies. To narrate the configuration of a continent to its modernity; from the creation of an independent Indian nation, to its partition, to its contemporary political turmoils. To speak to the abstract onslaught of time. To speak to something so localized and universal instantaneously. To frustrate the reader with long-winded asides and have them chortling at their relevance several chapters later. To evoke an ancient Asian storytelling tradition in a modern European context. To write so beautifully and so idiosyncratically for so long. To analogize a serious monumental rupture in the social fabric of the world with the superpowers of the children who lived through it. To resist an occularcentric view of the west with Saleem Sinai's "cucumber nose"-sense of the east ... Salman Rushdie wrote, in a letter dated 25th December 2005, that "if it can pass the test of another generation of two, it may endure." I fail to see how Midnight's Children cannot.