Midnight’s Children (1981)
Who wrote it?
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (1947-; active 1975-), born Mumbai (then Bombay), India, one of the most celebrated and (in)famous(?) writers of the modern era. Winner of numerous literary prizes (more below), knight of the realm, one of the most well-known (and most wanted) names in the world for a time due to the fatwa put on him in 1989 by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, recent star of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and many many other things beside.
There’s probably little I can add about Rushdie that most readers wouldn’t already know, but this was his breakthrough novel, regarded by many as his masterpiece and also the best ever Booker winner (twice declared.) My friends, we are dealing with the Heaviest of Heavy Hitters here.
What's it about
Midnight’s Children is a novel of many parts, meanings and interpretations. It tells the story not just of the complex and fantastic life of a man, Saleem Sinai, but of a young nation for whom Saleem is a mirror / proxy. It covers a large time period (from 30 years prior to the birth of Saleem / India to the present day), movements across the whole Indian subcontinent, wars, rises and falls of families and political dynasties, and people (including real people, proxies for real people, fictional inventions and fantastical creations.) There are, as they say, many worlds contained within these pages.
Attempting to summarize in more detail is a fool’s errand, but alongside the historical, personal and political, the novel also uses the fantastical tropes of magic realism, adding further richness to an already dense novel. Saleem is born at the moment of India’s independence, along with a thousand other “Midnight’s Children”, with whom he is able to communicate telepathically. This allegory for the dream of a successful multicultural, multilingual, pluralistic culture is shattered by wars, and ultimately by the Emergency rule of Indira Ghandi of 1975-77. Along the way Saleem’s powers also include an unsurpassed olfactory capability, which leads to him becoming (for a time) essentially an army sniffer-dog.
What I liked
This really does feel like a step-change in the history of the Booker, and I guess of various types of fiction (British, Indian, post-colonial, etc.) and it’s not hard to see why it’s such a decorated novel. The sheer formal invention, and range of styles encompassed, is like nothing else I’ve read in this series to date.
Perhaps most obviously, it marks a shift in the Prize’s engagement with the aftermath and lingering consequences of Empire. The books that tackled this in the 70s felt (to varying degrees) incomplete, unsatisfying. Some were written with a tourists-eye-view of countries like India, with picturesque sensibilities that obliterated complexity and occasionally flirted none too subtly with racism; others attempted to engage more seriously while retaining a nostalgia-for-Empire that dented their credibility. None thusfar had come anywhere close to this expansive, challenging, multifaceted, and provocative examination of India and its subcontinental neighbours in the early years of its independence.
I have a feeling that what I’ve written so far might suggest a certain heaviness about the book. And it is an intimidating tome - long, dense, filled with characters who change their names regularly, references to historical events (some at this distance less well known than others) and deliberately setting out to maintain rather than suppress complexity and contradiction. But ultimately it’s not a difficult read, nor is it overly serious. It’s playful, engaging, intriguing, and often very very funny.
Its humour comes in many shapes, but encompasses linguistic playfulness, overt satire, physical (and often scatological) humour that can verge on the childish, and the creation of larger-than-life (literally in many cases) charicature-like characters. All of it feels incredibly fresh and exciting when compared to the relatively straightforward (and often unsuccessful) attempts at raising a smile in previous novels.
Rushdie is having a lot of fun with names in this novel, which I’m always a fan of. Not only the deliberately alienating device of names being changed and forgotten, and identities swapped, but also just the proliferation of memorable nicknames (the Brass Monkey, Nussie the Duck, Shiva of the Knees, Picture Singh, Glandy Keith and Fat Perce, etc etc) - how can you not enjoy this?
It’s a small thing, I think, but the small everyday interventions of the framing / audience character Padma, Saleem/the narrator’s wife to be, are a real highlight and serve to highlight how much of the fantastically over-the-top language that dominates the novel is an intentional reflection of the increasingly grandiose pretensions of Saleem (and perhaps his mirror country, too…)
I don’t know what was in the water around the turn of the 80s (actually, it was postmodernism, I suppose) but this feels like the second Booker winner in a row to overtly reference Sterne and Tristram Shandy - the early part of the novel here in which we spend hundreds of pages telling Saleem’s story before he is even born feels hugely indebted to Shandy.
What I didn't like
This is a tougher one here! I could say it’s a little overlong, and perhaps that there are sections (particularly early on) that drag more than others, but I feel like most of that is down to me attempting to read at a certain pace for the purposes of my Booker project. I think this is book to take your time over and luxuriate in.
This is probably an odd complaint, perhaps, but I felt a little disappointed (given its prominence in blurbs and commentary) how small a part of the novel was taken up with an active focus on the telepathic communication between Saleem and the Midnight Children. In the scope of the novel, this super-interesting invention feels all too brief - it’s there and then it’s gone, almost. I guess to an extent that’s part of its structural role in the novel, to suggest infinite possibilities that are then cruelly annihilated by war and internal turmoil, by a need to partition, to segregate and separate. But it’s such a fascinating concept that it was a shame not to get deeper into it.
The treatment of women here is again potentially problematic - it has been said that they’re presented often as grotesques, and as the primary agents of threat and discord in the novel. This certainly seems on balance to be true, but there’s hardly an absence of grotesquerie on the male character side of things this time, and the latter can at least in part be explained as a deliberate reflection of Saleem’s own prejudices and paranoia. Far too complex an issue to satisfactorily cover here, essentially.
Food & drink pairings
Hmm, now, let’s see…
Oh yes, pickles and chutneys. We’re pickling history, here, you understand, but it wouldn’t hurt to have some as a tasty snack while we read, too. I’ll get the papadums in.
Fun facts
In retrospect, this feels like it must have been one of the most obvious winning choices in the history of the Booker. As well as the huge ensuing fame of both author and novel, Midnight’s Children won both the expert-panel-anointed “Booker of Bookers” in 1993 and the public voted “Best of the Booker” in 2008.
Apparently not so, though. Rushdie was far from the household name he became in 1981, “known” only for an obscure sci-fi novel published in 1975. He was up against some established names like Muriel Spark and Doris Lessing, as well as a young upstart by the name of Ian McEwan, all of whom apparently had passionate support from at least one judge. Through the usual Booker judging shenanigans, it ended up being a vote-off between Midnight’s Children and D. M. Thomas, for The White Hotel, which only went Rushdie’s way by one vote!
Indira Gandhi, who plays a towering and largely malevolent role in the novel, took legal action against Rushdie for her portrayal in the novel. Oddly, it came down to one single sentence accusing her of playing a role in the death of her husband, which was ultimately taken out of the novel as a result. I say “oddly” because, of course, the remainder of the novel, in no uncertain terms, accuses her of far greater and more numerous crimes.
Vanquished Foes
Molly Keane (Good Behaviour)
Doris Lessing (The Sirian Experiments)
Ian McEwan (The Comfort of Strangers)
Ann Schlee (Rhine Journey)
Muriel Spark (Loitering With Intent)
D. M. Thomas (The White Hotel)
I have a feeling I might have read the McEwan, though it doesn’t stick in my mind clearly so perhaps not? Otherwise it’s the usual zero from me. Any others worth checking out?
Context
In 1981 :
First recognised cases of AIDS reported in LA
Riots in Brixton, Liverpool (Toxteth), Leeds (Chapeltown), Birmingham (Handsworth) and others
Serial killer Peter Sutcliffe (the “Yorkshire Ripper”) arrested in Sheffield, England
Irish hunger strike - Bobby Sands and 9 other IRA and INLA members die
Assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat; election of Hosni Mubarak as replacement
Assassination of Bangladesh President Ziaur Rahman
Attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley, Jr.
Attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square
Francois Mitterrand becomes French President
Antigua and Barbuda gain independence from the UK
World's first "test-tube baby" born in Virginia, US
First London Marathon
Muhammad Ali's last ever fight ends in defeat to Trevor Berbick
Wedding of Prince Charles to Diana Spencer
Launch of MTV
Death of Bob Marley, aged 36
Donkey Kong released by Nintendo in Japan
Only Fools and Horses launches in the UK
New Order release "Ceremony", first post-Joy Division single
Peak Synthpop era in the UK, with releases including The Human League's Dare.
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Chariots of Fire
Gregory’s Girl
Life Lessons
Optimism is a disease
Preservation is important, be it pickles or history
I should read more magic realism
Score
9.5
I hate to be a predictable bore, but this is on almost a totally different level to most of the novels covered so far. Did I perhaps enjoy reading The Sea, The Sea slightly more? Maybe. Was I as blown away by it as I was by this? No.
Ranking to date:
Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie (1981) - 9.5
The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch (1978) - 9
Troubles - J.G. Farrell (1970, "Lost Booker") - 8.5
Saville - David Storey (1976) - 8
The Siege of Krishnapur - J.G. Farrell (1973) - 8
Rites of Passage - William Golding (1980) - 7.5
Offshore - Penelope Fitzgerald (1979) - 7.5
The Elected Member - Bernice Rubens (1970) - 7
The Conservationist - Nadine Gordimer (1974) - 7
Holiday - Stanley Middleton (1974) - 7 .
Heat & Dust - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1975) - 6.5
In a Free State* - V.S. Naipaul (1971) - 6.5
G. - John Berger (1972) - 6
Something to Answer For - P. H. Newby (1969) - 5.5
Staying On - Paul Scott (1977) - 5
*Read in later condensed edition.
Next up
Serious business incoming, as 1982 brings Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally.
