tklassy 's review for:

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

5.0

adventurous funny hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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Reading Midnight’s Children felt like stepping into a world where history and fantasy dance together in a hypnotic blur. Salman Rushdie masterfully blends the magical with the political, the absurd with raw reality. The result is a novel that’s as much about a nation’s coming-of-age as it is about one boy’s strange, kaleidoscopic life.

What struck me most was how seamlessly Rushdie wove the sweeping, often brutal history of post-partition India with the intimate, chaotic experiences of Saleem Sinai. His life mirrors the country's tumult, and yet the novel never feels like a history lesson—it’s alive with language, myth, and startling imagination. The absurdities aren’t distractions; they’re reflections of the surreal nature of real life in a time of upheaval.

     The novel is layered, lush, and demanding in the best way. It made me laugh, pause, reread, and marvel. I loved how it dared to be wholly fantastical while remaining deeply rooted in lived experience. It’s a book that doesn't just tell a story—it invents a new way of storytelling.