The length and density of Midnight's Children was too much for 50% of my family and friends book club. Non-finishers included both 30-somethings and 60-somethings. Those of us who persevered found the book enriching and enlightening. The writing style and vocabulary were discouraging to the more concrete readers in the group. I will read another of his books someday, but I will not recommend it for book club!

This book won the Booker of Bookers, so when I saw it sitting on the shelf, it said, "I must be good, take me home!" After all, I've adored some other Booker winners.

Not this one.

Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight, August 15th, 1947, at the same moment that India becomes an independent nation. He knows that he must be special - he even receives a letter from the Prime Minister for such a fortuitious birth time. This book isn't just about him, though, it is about several generations of his family and the history of his country, all of which makes it into a lengthy literary saga.

I didn't like Saleem. He drove me crazy with his dodging of topics and endless diversions. I wasn't interested in his relationship with Padma and I got completely fed up with his self-important attitude. I understand that his condition is reflected by India throughout the novel, but that didn't mean I enjoyed reading about it just because it had literary value. His connection with the other midnight children was interesting, but once again his arrogance ruined it. He's an unreliable narrator to an extent, but not in the way that I like, if that makes any sense at all. He's just trying to make himself sound good. Maybe because he is, apparently, not very attractive.

India, as a country, was by far the most compelling character throughout the book. I loved reading about the different regions, about Bombay and Delhi, about how rapidly India was changing. I'd certainly recommend this book for insight into the culture and that is easily the best part of it. I wouldn't mind seeing the Kashmir region for myself, now, after reading about it so many times.

So, in the end? I think Midnight's Children was too literary for me. I can tell that I'd get more enjoyment out of it if I went through in a class and then had to write a paper on it to pick it apart. As I was going through, I actually picked out paper topics that would illuminate the subject matter better. I'm not quite crazy enough to go out and write a paper just now, though. If I ever have fewer TBRs waiting for me, I might pick it up again and see if I can catch some of the threads that I missed this time, but I don't anticipate that happening for a long time.

Oh, my goodness. What do I say about this? It's such a rich, excellently written story with lots of interesting action and characters. Bonus: Rushdie has a wicked wicked WICKED sense of humor. And, did I say that the writing is to die for? Envy the size of an elephant inhabited my body as I was reading this ... however, it didn't take any pleasure away from the reading of it. Okay, I'm gonna get bossy now: Put it on your to-do list.

Oh, my goodness. What do I say about this? It's such a rich, excellently written story with lots of interesting action and characters. Bonus: Rushdie has a wicked wicked WICKED sense of humor. And, did I say that the writing is to die for? Envy the size of an elephant inhabited my body as I was reading this ... however, it didn't take any pleasure away from the reading of it. Okay, I'm gonna get bossy now: Put it on your to-do list.

This book left me with no respect for the author or for the Booker prize.One of the 100 best books to read....REALLY?????????? Are we talking about the same book????? The most disgusting and unconvincing book I have ever read.

If this book was described by 1001 readers, I think you'd get 10,001 different views of what they experienced. Some knowledge of the history of India & Pakistan before and after independence and the partition will be helpful. Perhaps some "-ism" (magical real(ism), coming-of-age(ism); post-modern(ism); stream of .....) reading would prepare you for this. But neither is required to enjoy it. Having read many of the less than stellar reviews, it seems that many had preconceived notions that weren't met or they tried to make it a fast read.

This is not a "page turner" suspense novel; nor is it Joycean (or any other author's). It is Rushdie. This is what he writes and how he writes. Read it for its own style rather than trying to compare it with someone else.

I think too much effort is made by publishers and reviewers to put authors into groups. I'm sure the publishers do it to capture buyers with "if you like A, then you'll like B". Reviewers too often do it to show how many authors they have read rather than making valid comparisons.

Base your judgment of Rushdie (or any of his books) on what you like or dislike about his work rather than by "someone says he is like Marquez and he isn't, so I didn't like it".

Rushdie employs magical realism to unveil the soul of India. An incredible fiction that tells the true story of India's birth as a nation. I read the book years ago, and then felt it come to life as I spent 6 months wandering around India. A work of art, and one of my favorite books ever.

Dipping into controversial and expansive review of India's nouveau independence, Rushdie's autobiographical recitation (in fiction) of protagonist nasal-telepathic Saleem Sinai bestows lessons and conjures imagination.

Some novelists have received acclaim for making allegory through adventure - Coello for "The Alchemist" or Kosinski for "The Painted Bird." As great as those novels are, neither has the depth of review that this novel has. And, much to Rushdie's credit, this adventure intertwines with real events of the recent histories of India and Pakistan - thereby making it more relevant to those who lived or have heard about the many historical references contained throughout this book.

Being an American usually means reading little about the history or culture of India. We are ignorant of their struggles - and this book enlivens us to a certain degree - such that the reader can conclude from reading this book that this country has struggled as greatly since its independence from Britain, than it did under British rule. Forster's portrait of British degradation of India in "A Passage to India" made westerners believe that Gandhi's plight was both necessary and inevitable. This book tells us that freedom from British rule did not necessarily deliver better karma or even sounder ruling. The "Emergency" of Indira Gandhi delivers an appalling caricature of Indians being cruel to Indians - as Saleem must be emasculated by the ruling party's dictate - for reasons no more discernable than the German holocaust or any other genocide.

This book travels chronologically from Saleem's grandparents' romance to his 31st birthday. Saleem lives an incredible life -worthy of this book's size. His life - or really his son's life - is encapsulated in one sentence: "He was the child of a father who was not his father; but also the child of a time which damaged reality so badly that no one managed to put it together again; He was the true great-grandson of his great-grandfather. . ." It makes nonsense until you read the book - then this statement is both valid and true.

Amid this adventure we meet snake charmers, a succubus wet nurse, a witch, a 512-year old prostitute - as well as typical western literature characters, e.g. a man who shoots his wife and her lover, a corrupt general, and a son who kills his father out of pure hatred.

This is a thoroughly drawn portrait of a literary character. Amassing 445 pages in my hardback edition - each page having approximately 550 words - it is a long read. And, Rushdie's swirling writing style, where he touches upon a topic and a few paragraphs or pages later descends upon that same topic with more resonance or more detail, can leave readers feeling half empty at times as the complete description will not come to light until a later time. This is not a quick read. This is not easy reading. But, this is worthwhile reading.

Rushdie writes with great literary style. Full of metaphors and complete with magical insight, this book is understandably incorporated by many universities' English departments

I wanted to read a Rushdie book and I've heard this book being called the "Booker of the Bookers" (referring to the prize). Rusdie's writing may be poetic and beautiful, but it is hard to trudge through this fairly long book. Furthermore, Midnight's Children is not particularly educational as far as Indian history and culture. The author may deserve his great reputation for his writing style but don't expect to be entertained.

Reading this book made me feel like I was back in highschool and reading a required book for English class. My apologies to literature lovers who may consider me a philistine.

Salman Rushdie is the third author I've read recently that I'd put off reading for many years out of a misplaced fear I'd find his books dull and uninteresting--James Joyce and Thomas Pynchon are the other two authors. With great consternation and teeth-gnashing I finally picked "Midnight's Children" off the shelf and soon wondered what the heck had taken me so long.

To put it simply, "Midnight's Children" is a great book. It's a darkly comic odyssey through the history of India in the 20th Century told not only with touches of humor, but the supernatural as well. Reading the book can be an adventure, given the winding narrative that mixes past and present and the walls of print on each print, but it's an adventure worth the effort.

The story is told by Saleem Sinai on what he believes to be his deathbed. Padma, his caretaker and erstwhile fiance, begs to differ with this assessment, but aids Saleem by serving also as sounding board and editor. The relationship between Saleem and Padma continues to advance as he recounts the story not just of his life, but those of his parents and grandparents as well. His grandfather was a European-trained doctor in 1915 who returned to India, lost faith in God, and met Saleem's grandmother through a strategically torn sheet. His mother marries a poet on the run from assassins who hides out in their basement, but because he does not have sex with her winds up divorcing her. She then marries the businessman Ahmed Sinai and changes her name. On the stroke of India's birth, along comes Saleem. From this moment, his fate is tied with that of India. Like Saleem, the new nation of India--as well as Pakistan and Bangladesh--is finding its way and searching for its identity, though the answer is not really a happy one.

A side plot involves the "Midnight's Children," a group of children born in that first minute of India's existence. These 1001 children have supernatural abilities. Saleem can read minds while others master witchcraft, time travel, and so forth. This put me a little too in mind of the X-Men, though Saleem lacks the composure and leadership abilities of Charles Xavier and his rival Shiva is never as charismatic or evil as Magneto. (Recent TV viewers might compare this more to "Heroes" or "The 4400.") At any rate, I didn't particularly enjoy this subplot until at the end when it's used to demonstrate the madness of the Indira Gandhi regime.

Even if you're like me and have little understanding of India short of watching "Gandhi" you can still make sense of this book if you're willing to try. Make no mistake: this is not for the casual reader or the faint of heart. At the same time, the touches of humor--especially the bickering between Saleem and Padma about how to tell the story--and the supernatural make for an entertaining yarn. In the end you might also wonder what took you so long to find this wonderful book.

That is all.

"Midnight's Children" is Salman Rushdie's fictional rumination on the first 30 years of India's independence following British rule. Saleem Sinai, an Indian Muslim born on the stroke of midnight August 15, 1947, at the instant of India's independence, recounts a mystical, doleful tale of his own birth and trials as they coincided with those of India and Pakistan. All children born at the hour of independence were endowed with extraordinary gifts, the great potential of a new nation. Saleem of elephantine nose and dual parentage sees them all in his paranormally perceptive mind as he is witness to the initial optimism, two Indo-Pakistani wars, and India's oppressive State of Emergency instigated by Prime Minister Indira Ghandi.

"Midnight's Children" is an opinionated, critical tour of modern India's struggles with its own diversity and demons. Its overwhelming pessimism seems out of place now, as India has become one of the world's fastest-growing economies. The book must be viewed in the context of the time at which it was written, the late 1970s. Salman Rushdie has a lot to say, and says most of it more than once. He pulls no punches and makes no excuses for anyone. In spite of Saleem's first-person narration, Rushdie's fractured, repetitive prose style impedes its accessibility and slows the reader down. And I would not have thought it possible to pile so many metaphors on top of metaphors and remain coherent. "Midnight's Children" is a long, provocative lament but somewhat overworked.

"Midnight's Children" is Salman Rushdie's rumination on the first 30 years of India's independence following British rule. Saleem Sinai, an Indian Muslim born on the stroke of midnight August 15, 1947, at the instant of India's independence, recounts a mystical, doleful tale of his own birth and trials as they coincided with those of India and Pakistan. All children born at the hour of independence were endowed with extraordinary gifts, the great potential of a new nation. Saleem of elephantine nose and dual parentage sees them all in his paranormally perceptive mind as he is witness to the initial optimism, two Indo-Pakistani wars, and India's oppressive State of Emergency instigated by Prime Minister Indira Ghandi.

"Midnight's Children" is an opinionated, critical tour of modern India's struggles with its own diversity and demons. Its overwhelming pessimism seems out of place now, as India has become one of the world's fastest-growing economies. The book must be viewed in the context of time at which it was written, the late 1970s. Salman Rushdie has a lot to say, and says most of it more than once. He pulls no punches and makes no excuses for anyone. In spite of Saleem's first-person narration, Rushdie's fractured, repetitive prose style impedes its accessibility and slows the reader down. And I would not have thought it possible to pile so many metaphors on top of metaphors and remain coherent. "Midnight's Children" is a long, provocative lament but somewhat overworked.

Much has been written about the unique writing style of Salman Rushdie and Midnight's Children. It is hip to like it and thus call oneself a literary, and not unusual to dislike it as an uninitiated reader who cannot possibly know what to expect a priori. For what it's worth, here is my attempt to characterize the style. The book is written as a "stream of consciousness", long long long sentences, side-by-side repetition of adjectives for emphasis (hint hint hint!), use of synonyms similes parellels without punctuation or separators (again for emphasis), revealing the plot's end-game in advance yet (or thus) engaging the reader in the path to getting there, repeated summaries each to make an overarching point than to simply recollect the story so far, admitted insecurity and intermittent defense of the story's believability, and did I mention rechristening of events and characters with metaphoric names. If you could read and follow the last sentence in one shot, you are ready to read and enjoy Midnight's Children. The story-telling is hallucinatory on the surface, but enlightened underneath; deliriously exaggerated on the surface, but scrupulously balanced underneath; grossly fatalistic on the surface, but hopelessly optimistic underneath; carelessly raw on the surface, but meticulous genius underneath.

Never judge a book by its cover, judge it by its metaphors. Besides being one intense allegory, the book is a collection of the richest metaphors I've ever read in a piece of literature. Metaphors, mind you, and not its evil cousin, Analogies. Every event and character is first rechristened with its metaphoric name. In the process of writing the book, Rushdie has created a new vocabulary of words that become the best way (if not the only way) to describe those characters and events.

Spoiler alert: To pick from this new vocabulary, one way of characterizing the life of Saleem Sinai, and therefore the book, is Sperectomy: the draining-out of hope. To quote the last sentence of the book that sums it up "...because it is the privilege and the curse of midnight's children to be both masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and to be unable to live or die in peace."

Midnight's Children is a great way to live vicariously through post-colonial India. If A Fine Balance is a bus-ride through India with a good commentator, Midnight's Children is your dark roller-coaster with ghosts popping out at you at every turn. If A Fine Balance is real in a touchy-and-feely way that you wish it was unreal, Midnight's Children is unreal in a mystical way that you will hate to, and yet force yourself to believe it is real; just like a post-traumatic nightmare, only it was a re-enactment.

The thing that really surprised me about Midnight's Children, by the end of it, was its generally sardonic attitude towards the magical symbolism and omens that are so central to the plot. So much is made of the mystical connections relating to the main character (Saleem Sinai), so much promise is set up in the story, that it's surprising when the abuse starts being heaped on Saleem with almost sadistic relentlessness. By the end of the story Rushdie has portrayed a startlingly pessimistic view of the "potential" of the innocent. And, with the obvious parallels between the life of Saleem Sinai and the development of modern India, Rushdie also exhibits a pessimistic and fairly depressing forecast for the future of one of the world's most populous nations.

But amidst all that is an epic; a collection of stories that seems almost like "A Thousand and One Nights" in its scope. The magical realism style Rushdie employs is far less confusing than that of Gabriel Garcia Marquez: where Marquez's rambling, stream of consciousness writing serves largely to (intentionally) disorient the reader, Rushdie (through a liberal use of semi-colons) gently guides the reader through narrative leaps spanning both time and distance. Astonishingly descriptive, Rushdie is almost more a painter than a writer in this book: the near 550 pages pass by with a very economical use of dialogue, and it is the scenes and descriptions that provide the meat and memories of the novel.

Those who are fans of Tolkein and other authors who write lavishly detailed stories simply cannot miss this novel. "Midnight's Children" plays out like an Oscar-winning film or a very vivid, elaborate dream.

It's no wonder that this book won the 1993 Booker of Bookers.
It is amazingly written and the story is hugely engaging. The narrative is delicious, Rushdie paints his book with the skill of a real artist.
An amazing read, and highly recommended by me.

Rushdie's book Midnight's Children is unbearable. The book is extremely repetitive and boring. Rushdie attempts to avoid this criticism by being "unique" and using a stream of consciousness technique that infuriated me consistently during the reading. The book is filled with supposedly "deep" metaphors, which are actually incredibly superficial and annoying. Rushdie's arrogance and narcissism is reflected by the main character of the book, Saleem, who spends the majority of a 500 page novel complaining about how life hasn't treated him fairly. Prior to reading the novel I was disgusted by what I knew of Indian tradition in general, particularly the caste system and pervasive racism in the country. This novel did little to enlighten western readers to some redeeming quality in their society, and left me, a staunch liberal, reconsidering how bad colonialism actually was. Since I realize that colonialism was one of the most immoral actions perpetrated by any group of people in history, it only goes to show you how negatively Rushdie portrays what should be a vibrant culture. Since this seems to be the only reason to market this novel towards western readers, I am forced to conclude that this novel is a complete failure.

had fair expectations. rushdie spends too much time being cutesy and obnoxiously witty. read a book on indian history instead.

This is great until you read 'The Tin Drum' by Gunter Grass and discover he just ripped it off and changed the setting.

This novel is very interesting, sometimes funny, sometimes very satisfying. But Rushdie's style can be described as broad, the novel wanders all over the place and I soemtimes found myself wondering what a particular portion had to do with the rest of the story line. Getting through this novel requires some work and dedication, but I still think it's worth it.

This novel is very interesting, sometimes funny, sometimes very satisfying. But Rushdie's style can be described as broad, the novel wanders all over the place and I soemtimes found myself wondering what a particular portion had to do with the rest of the story line. Getting through this novel requires some work and dedication, but I still think it's worth it.