Midnight's Children
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Anyone who has spent time in the developing world will know that one of Bombay's claims to fame is the enormous film industry that churns out hundreds of musical fantasies each year. The other, of course, is native son Salman Rushdie--less prolific, perhaps than Bollywood, but in his own way just as fantastical. Though Rushdie's novels lack the requisite six musical numbers that punctuate every Bombay talkie, they often share basic plot points with their cinematic counterparts. Take, for example, his 1980 Booker Prize-winning Midnight's Children: two children born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947--the moment at which India became an independent nation--are switched in the hospital. The infant scion of a wealthy Muslim family is sent to be raised in a Hindu tenement, while the legitimate heir to such squalor ends up establishing squatters' rights to his unlucky hospital mate's luxurious bassinet. Switched babies are standard fare for a Hindi film, and one can't help but feel that Rushdie's world-view--and certainly his sense of the fantastical--has been shaped by the films of his childhood. But whereas the movies, while entertaining, are markedly mediocre, Midnight's Children is a masterpiece, brilliant written, wildly unpredictable, hilarious and heartbreaking in equal measure.
Rushdie's narrator, Saleem Sinai, is the Hindu child raised by wealthy Muslims. Near the beginning of the novel, he informs us that he is falling apart--literally:
I mean quite simply that I have begun to crack all over like an old jug--that my poor body, singular, unlovely, buffeted by too much history, subjected to drainage above and drainage below, mutilated by doors, brained by spittoons, has started coming apart at the seams. In short, I am literally disintegrating, slowly for the moment, although there are signs of an acceleration.In light of this unfortunate physical degeneration, Saleem has decided to write his life story, and, incidentally, that of India's, before he crumbles into "(approximately) six hundred and thirty million particles of anonymous, and necessarily oblivious, dust." It seems that within one hour of midnight on India's independence day, 1,001 children were born. All of those children were endowed with special powers: some can travel through time, for example; one can change gender. Saleem's gift is telepathy, and it is via this power that he discovers the truth of his birth: that he is, in fact, the product of the illicit coupling of an Indian mother and an English father, and has usurped another's place. His gift also reveals the identities of all the other children and the fact that it is in his power to gather them for a "midnight parliament" to save the nation. To do so, however, would lay him open to that other child, christened Shiva, who has grown up to be a brutish killer. Saleem's dilemma plays out against the backdrop of the first years of independence: the partition of India and Pakistan, the ascendancy of "The Widow" Indira Gandhi, war, and, eventually, the imposition of martial law.
We've seen this mix of magical thinking and political reality before in the works of Günter Grass and Gabriel García Márquez. What sets Rushdie apart is his mad prose pyrotechnics, the exuberant acrobatics of rhyme and alliteration, pun, wordplay, proper and "Babu" English chasing each other across the page in a dizzying, exhilarating cataract of words. Rushdie can be laugh-out-loud funny, but make no mistake--this is an angry book, and its author's outrage lends his language wings. Midnight's Children is Salman Rushdie's irate, affectionate love song to his native land--not so different from a Bombay talkie, after all. --Alix Wilber --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
Review
"Salman Rushdie has earned the right to be called one of our great storytellers." -- Observer
"Huge, vital, engrossing... in all senses a fantastic book." -- Sunday Times
"The literary map of India has been redrawn... Midnight's Children sounds like a country finding its voice." -- New York Times
"A brilliant and endearing novel." -- London Review of Books
From the Trade Paperback edition. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .
"Huge, vital, engrossing... in all senses a fantastic book." -- Sunday Times
"The literary map of India has been redrawn... Midnight's Children sounds like a country finding its voice." -- New York Times
"A brilliant and endearing novel." -- London Review of Books
From the Trade Paperback edition. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .
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Couverture | Copyright | Table des matières | Extrait | Quatrième de couverture
Couverture | Copyright | Table des matières | Extrait | Quatrième de couverture
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Commentaires client les plus utiles
10 internautes sur 10 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile
5.0 étoiles sur 5
A wonderful book,
Par Un client
Ce commentaire fait référence à cette édition : Midnight's Children (Broché)
I would never have thought of reading Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, "Far too intellectual for me," I thought, until in casual conversation, someone recommended it to me as their favourite book. I bought it and it sat on my bookshelf for while until I ran out of things to read and picked it up. From the first sentence, I loved it. The characters and the sights and smells are described in such a way that you can imagine it all in front of you and the world takes on a different face as you read the book. It tells the story of the children born on midnight of India's independence through the eyes of the main character, who himself is one of these children. It is a delicious mixture of fantasy and history and impressions of the Indian subcontinent with certain sentences so beautiful and apt, you want to memorise them.
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2 internautes sur 2 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile
5.0 étoiles sur 5
A must,
Par
Ce commentaire fait référence à cette édition : Midnight's Children (Broché)
Magic realism, gripping book, beautiful style, unforgettable characters, words are not enough to describe the magic operated by the book and the unforgettable experience it was to read it. It's probably one of the best, and most original, books I've ever read, one that will always stay in my mind. This book is a must, a reference. Read it.
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