Midnights Children

A classic novel, in which the man who calls himself the "bomb of Bombay" chronicles the story of a child and a nation that both came into existence in 1947--and examines a whole people's capacity for carrying inherited myths and inventing new ones.

The aim of this series is to provide accessible and informative introductions to the most popular, most acclaimed and most influential novels of recent years.

Salman Rushdie S Midnight S Children, Ever Since Its Publication In 1980, Has Been Considered An Ingenious Piece Of Literary Art And A Trendsetter In The Field Of Indian Fiction In English. The Stupendous Success Of This Novel Broke All Previous Records And Rushdie Was Hailed As One Who Engendered A Whole New Generation Of Fiction Writers That Embraced Magical Realism As A Mode For The Depiction Of History. The Variant Mode Of The Portrayal Of Historical Reality That Rushdie Adopts In Midnight S Children Is Characteristically His Own And His Fantasizing Of Facts In This Novel Inspired A Host Of Other Writers To Offer, In Their Respective Works, Their Own Blends Of Fact And Fiction.Midnight S Children Is A Multi-Faceted Novel Which Lends Itself To Analysis From Various Angles And Perspectives. Be It From The Point Of View Of Structure Or Content, The Work Yields A Richness That Has Been Variously Explored By The Scholars Who Have Contributed To This Anthology Of Essays On It.

Neil Ten Kortenaar examines the key critical concepts associated with contemporary postcolonial theory, including hybridity, mimicry, national allegory, and cosmopolitanism, through a close reading of Salman Rushdie's 'Midnight's Children'.

*WINNER OF THE BOOKER AND BEST OF THE BOOKER PRIZE* 'A wonderful, rich and humane novel... a classic' Guardian Born at the stroke of midnight at the exact moment of India's independence, Saleem Sinai is a special child. However, this coincidence of birth has consequences he is not prepared for: telepathic powers connect him with 1,000 other 'midnight's children' all of whom are endowed with unusual gifts. Inextricably linked to his nation, Saleem's story is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirrors the course of modern India at its most impossible and glorious. WITH A NEW 40TH ANNIVERSARY INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR

On magical realism in literature

Salman Rushdie (1947 ) Has Emerged Over The Years As One Of The Most Controversial Figures Of Our Times Who Excites Contrary Feelings. But Whether Admired Or Criticized, The Fact Remains That Rushdie, With His Commitment To Struggle For Freedom Of Expression, For Speech To The Silenced, For Power To The Disempowered, Is A Writer Who Cannot Be Ignored.One Of The Major Preoccupations Of Rushdie S Art Is The Issue Of Migrant Identity. Many Of His Characters Are Migrants Drifting From Shore To Shore In Search Of Some Imaginary Homeland , And Obviously The Author Identifies Himself With His Migrant Personae. Search For Identity Is Perhaps The One Recurring Theme In Rushdie S Works, And The Themes Of Double Identity , Divided Selves And Shadow Figures Persist In His Writings As Correlative For The Schismatic/Dual Identity Of The Migrant, As Well As The Necessary Confusion And Ambiguity Of The Migrant Existence. Rushdie Describes The World From This Unique Point Of View Of The Migrant Narrator. He Is Also Conscious Of His Role In This Regard In Re-Describing The World, And Thus Creating A New Vision Of Art And Life.By Exercising What He Describes As The Migrant Writer S Privilege To Choose His Parents Rushdie Has Chosen His Inheritance From A Vast Repertoire Of Literary Parents, Including Cervantes, Kafka, Melville, Et Al.His Novels And Stories Derive Their Special Flavour From The Author S Superb Handling Of The Characteristic Postmodern Devices Like Magic Realism, Palimpsest, Ekphrasis, Etc. Rushdie Has Been Rightly Compared With Such Literary Innovators Stalwarts Of Our Times As Gunter Grass, Milan Kundera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Et Al. Readers Of The Present Volumes Will Be Taken Round The World Of Rushdie By Erudite Scholars Whose Well-Researched, Perceptive Articles Will Add Substantially To Their Enjoyment Of These Fantastic Imaginary Homelands .

Salman Rushdie is perhaps the most important writer of the present time. His significant and controversial literary interventions in debates on post-colonial culture and contemporary South Asian Islam are matched by the contribution he has made to postmodern literature in the West (culminating in the award to him in 1993 of the twenty-fifth-anniversary Booker of Bookers prize).This collection of articles focuses on Rushdie's five novels. The context is set by the introduction, The Politics of Salman Rushdie's Fiction, which discusses the political stance of Rushdie's fiction, the various influences on his work, and the textual strategies and techniques he employs, for political expression and cultural critique. The postmodern/post-colonial interface, the carnivalesque, and satire are major themes treated here and in the articles that follow, which also provide diverse other perspectives on Rushdie's thought and method. A number of essays have been commissioned specially for this volume. An appendix listing selected writings by Rushdie and articles on the Satanic Verses Affair is followed by a comprehensive bibliography annotating critical studies of Rushdie's work.

Waiting for the End examines two dozen contemporary novels within the context of a half century of theorizing about the function of ending in narrative. That theorizing about ending generated a powerful dynamic a quarter-century ago with the advent of feminist criticism of masculinist readings of the role played by ending in fiction. Feminists such as Theresa de Lauretis in 1984 and more famously Susan Winnett in her 1991 PMLA essay, Coming Unstrung, were leading voices in a swelling chorus of theorist pointing out the masculinist bias of ending in narrative. With the entry of feminist readings of ending, it became inevitable that criticism of fiction would become gendered through the recognition of difference transcending a simple binary of female/male to establish a spectrum of masculine to feminine endings, regardless of the sex of the writer. Accordingly, Waiting for the End examines pairs of novels - one pair by Margaret Atwood and one by Ian McEwan - to demonstrate how a writer can offer endings at either end of the gender spectrum.

This Volume Brings Together Ten Essays On Midnight'S Children (1980) And An Interview With Salman Rushdie That Discuss This Seminal Novel From Different Perspectives. Rushdie'S Innovative Use Of History And Memory, His Experiments With Language And Narrative Mode, The Novel'S Status As The Paradigmatic Postcolonial Text, Its Inter-Textuality And Self0Reflevivity, The Influences On The Novel As Well As Its Influence On Subsequent Novels, The Author'S Relationship With India As An Insider-Outsider Are Some Of The Many Issues Explored By The Critics.

A Study Of The Indian Novels On Emergency - Includes Studie Of Quite A Few Important Novels On The Subject - A Chapter That Covers The Novels Of Salman Rushdie - Raj Gill - Nayantara Sehgal - Manohar Malgaonkar - Shashi Tharoor - O.P. Vijayan - Arun Joshi - Rohington Mistry - Balwant Gargi - Ranjit Gargi - Ranjit Lal - Also Covers Briefly Non-English Indian Emergency Novel - Index.

Rushdie Has Put Behind Him The Political And Religious Controversy That Surrounded Him In The Aftermath Of The Appearance Of The Satanic Verses. These Two Volumes Endeavour To Continue The Literary-Critical Study Of His Works By Bringing Together Some Of The Best Critical Essays Written In The Post- Verses Controversy Period. The Essays Present An Honest Assessment Of Rushdie S Works By Creatively Engaging With The Issues Each Of Them Raises.

Literary criticism of Rushdie's work outside of special journals and periodicals.

Winner of the Booker prize and twice winner of the Booker of Bookers, Midnight's Children is "one of the most important books to come out of the English-speaking world in this generation" (New York Review of Books). Reissued for the 40th anniversary of the original publication--with a new introduction from the author--Salman Rushdie's widely acclaimed novel is a masterpiece in literature. Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,” all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts. This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Midnight’s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.

Whereas the text of modernity thrived on its rhythms, symbols, and representations of beauty, and above all on its impersonality, postmodernity in the late decades of the twentieth century sought relationships outside the text - those between literature and history, philosophy, psychology, society, and culture. The exploration of such relationships is literary to postmodernity as it is ancillary to modernity."--BOOK JACKET.

Gayatri Spivak, one of the most influential scholars in critical theory today, addresses the issues of multi-culturalism, international feminism, and post-colonial criticism, in an exciting new collection of her recent work.