Midnights Children

Midnight's Children is a loose allegory for events in India both before and, primarily, after the independence and partition of India, which took place at midnight on 15 August 1947. The protagonist and narrator of the story is Saleem Sinai, a telepath with a nasal defect, who is born at the exact moment that India becomes independent. Saleem Sinai's life then parallels the changing fortunes of the country after independence.

The story continues on how young Saleem uses his special midnight given telepathic power to bring the Midnights Children together. And as you can expect, children with varying degrees of special powers will try to overpower each other and there is conflict. In the meantime, outside of his head, Saleem's family moves to neighboring Pakistan and young Saleem goes through the struggles of youth with an inflated sense of self importance.

I think that my real issue with the novel is that you couldn't help but think that Rushde is a very self serving author. You get the impression that he is a hero in his own mind. He's not a particularly likeable protagonist, or very heroic, although his prose is written in such a way that it is constantly demanding that the reader sympathize with him and his big ugly nose with drippy nasal passages.

And then of course, outside the novel, you have all of the protests that this book caused when published because Arab's found it offensive. Granted it's no teddy bear named Muhammad, but I could see how it subtly paint's Pakistan in a less than favorable light.

It's really too bad that we don't have a label that is "eh" because that's how I sort of felt about this book. I didn't particularly like any of the characters or reading about boogers for pages on end, the plot wasn't thrilling, but at the same time, I wouldn't necessary say that this book was "bad". It was interesting to read, but nothing that you need to run right out and read this instant.