Synopsis
Considered Salman Rushdie's masterpiece, MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN has become a part of the literary canon, drawing comparisons to ARABIAN NIGHTS for its multi-layered narrative, to Joyce's ULYSSES for its literary and linguistic inventiveness, to Marquez's ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE for its lush magical-realism, and Gunter Grass's THE TIN DRUM, for its ability to capture the history and zeitgeist of a nation. The novel is narrated by Saleem Sinai, a child born at the exact moment India gained independence in 1947, who discovers he has the telepathic ability to hear the thoughts of the one thousand and one other children born within the first hour of India's independence: the other "midnight's children." Mixing historical events and figures with witches, prophecy, and magic, the novel acts as an allegory for India's turbulent history, a coming-of-age tale, and an epic family saga. Hailed by TIME magazine as one of the hundred greatest novels in the English language, MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN won the Booker prize in 1981, and also won the "Best of the Booker" prize in both 1993 and 2008, proving its lasting power.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 2006-04-04 | | Edition Description: | Reprint |
| Size | | Length: | 533 pages | | Height: | 8.0 in | | Width: | 5.3 in | | Thickness: | 1.2 in | | Weight: | 14.4 oz |
Publisher's Note
The life of a man born at the moment of India's independence becomes inextricably linked to that of his nation and is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirror modern India's course, in a twenty-fifth anniversary edition of the Booker Prize-winning novel.
Industry Reviews
"In Salman Rushdie, India has produced a glittering novelist--one with startling imaginative and intellectual resources, a master of perpetual storytelling."
V. S. Pritchett
"An extraordinary novel...one of the most important to come out of the English speaking world in this generation."
New York Review of Books - Robert Towers
"We have an epic in our laps. The obvious comparisons are to Gunter Grass in 'The Tin Drum' and to Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'. I am happy to oblige the obvious....I wish Mr. Rushdie's children, all of them orphans of history, would take over the world at dawn. This novel--exuberant, excessive, despairing--is special."
New York Times - John Leonard
"In 'Midnight's Children', he created a character who is nothing less than India herself, wired telepathically to all the other children born at the very instant when India became a nation, enfolding all contradictions, sinned against and sinning, mad as hell and forgiving all."
Millennium Whole Earth Catalog - JRC
| See an error? Submit a change request |
All rights reserved.
