Midnight's Children
By: Salman Rushdie

Quoted from Newsweek:
"A marvelous epic novel . . . Rushdie's prose snaps into playback and flash-forward . . . stopping on images, vistas, and characters of unforgettable presence.  Their range is as rich as India herself - a most extraordinary book."

Quoted from the Philadelphia Inquirer:
"In combining past with present, nostalgic realism with mythic overtones, specific detail with complex and binding narrative devices, Rushdie has achieved a magnificent and unique work of fiction . . . Dazzling"

Quoted from the Chicago Sun-Times
"Pure story - an ebullient, wildly clowning, satrical, descriptively witty charge of energy"

This historical chronical of modern India centers on the fates of two children born within the first hour of India's independence from Great Britain.  Like the 1000 other "midnight's children," Saleem Sinai is blessed - or burdened - with extraordinary powers.  Saleem's birth is heraled with the same commotion as the birth of the nation, as it soon becomes apparant that their fates are magically linked.  This website, designed as a final project for my Honors Global Studies class at Ball State University, is intended to aid you in your study of this novel.  Some of the aspects of study that I think are most important to the book are listed below.

Aspects of the Novel to Study:

About the Author
Magic Realism
Midnight Children's Conference and Power
Impact of Women on Narrator
Fragmentation
Public vs. Private
Memory - with links to perforated sheet and spittoon
Pickles
Works Cited

For more information on Midnight's Children, please visit the site of my classmate, Kim.  Her page focuses on the religion, history, social structure, culture, government and literature of India. 

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