Book review
Much like Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children” takes us on a magical journey through history with a narrator who, like Marquez’s characters, cannot be authenticated or found in any history book.
The narrator, Saleem Sinai, was born at the exact stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947. If I were to give a pop quiz, most people would likely fail to identify this moment. It is the moment of India’s independence, and Saleem is hailed as the symbol of his country’s new life.
With the newborn country’s and his fates inexplicably linked, Saleem finds he has the telepathic power to connect the minds of more than 1,000 “Midnight’s Children”; these children were also born on that stroke of midnight, and, like himself, possess great powers he naively hopes can be used for the greater good of India.
Opposite of Saleem, Rushdie brilliantly plants Saleem’s “twin”; a boy switched at birth and given to the wrong family, making Saleem the undeserving benefactor of a larger and wealthier family. The boy, named Shiva, becomes ugly with anger and attempts to rise from poverty and eventually destroy Saleem.
Trusting a history book for information on foreign cultures can be a dry, unpleasant and possibly untrustworthy way of gaining insight. Through fiction, “Midnight’s Children” provides a keyhole look at the giant ocean of social conflict between India and Pakistan. While the book can be used to better understand Indian and Pakistani relations — which is important, given that the threat of nuclear war is still fresh from the lips of both countries — the blend of magical realism with factual occurrences provides a vivid narrative that demands historical knowledge, or at the very least, appreciation, of its reader.
One of the most intriguing aspects of this novel is that Saleem, the narrator, is writing the book even as we read. Sitting with his companion Padma, a woman with puppy-like devotion for the dying narrator, Saleem is our guide through a maze of characters and places.
With witty and sometimes prophetic comments interspersed throughout the narrative, he paints a picture colored with poverty and riches, despair and redemption, and above all, magic. Saleem’s world is one in which anything can happen, and everything does.
Like Forrest Gump — and I don’t mean to detract from Rushdie’s novel with the comparison — Saleem becomes participant in almost every major event in India’s history since its independence; his importance allows for readers to follow along eagerly, wondering what will happen next.
Rushdie will be in Portland at a Powell’s Books event 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 25. For more information, call (800) 878-7323.
Contact the columnist at [email protected]. Her opinions do not necessarily
represent those of the Emerald.