Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children: A Reader's Guide (Continuum Contemporaries)

This is a light-weight analysis of Rushdie's celebrated and complex novel. While it may suffice to be used as a supplement to the novel in an undergraduate literature course, it is sorely lacking for those who are more well read than your average undergrad and are looking for something more in-depth. Its list of characters and their backgrounds is severely limited considering that dozens and dozens of characters populate this novel. No background information is provided on the religions of the subcontinent which is necessary for understanding the novel. But most disappointing of all is the lack of analysis of the novel itself. Instead of the thirty or so pages spent looking at the novels critical reception the space would have been better used for a more detailed critical analysis of the novel.

Helpful in many ways. The book is difficult in part because of the many references and allusions that are not familiar to everyone. Being able to get past name-changes, historical references, religious words and relationships, and other items covered in "A Reader's Guide" lessened the temptation to skip them and thereby miss the thicker nap of the novel.

Readers who like to see main characters overcome problems in their lives and the lives of their loved ones will enjoy this book. Readers who enjoy social commentary and offbeat characters will enjoy it more. Readers who revel in allegory combined with beautiful language, frequent dream-like sequences,, and a plot both outlandish and believable will be ecstatic. Rushdie, a transplanted Indian, views the independence and eventual partition of India through the eyes one of the children born at midnight when India becomes independent.These children are blessed--perhaps cursed is a better word--with unusual understanding and gifts. His interpretation of Indian development from that point on is so complex that he borrows literary techniques from Lawrence Sterne, Gunter Grass and Gabriel Garcia Marquez to express himself. In his view these childrenf are important because "it is the privilege and the curse of midnight's children to be both masters and victims of their times...."

Extremely well written book