Midnight’s Children is an award-winning novel by Salman Rushdie, though Rushdie is known more for the protests and death threats against him due to his Satanic Verses.
The main character in Midnight’s Children is Saleem Sinai who’s born at the same instant as India becomes independent on August 15, 1947. His life story follows the twists and turns of national events. He even shows up in Pakistan for Ayub Khan’s martial law declaration and then later when his family is killed in a bombing raid during the 1965 war. The story then moves to the suppression of Bangladeshis by Pakistan’s security forces in 1971 and then to India again for Indira Gandhi’s emergency in 1975. Of course, Saleem Sinai plays a role in all these events.
Overall, the story is fun and covers the post-Independence history of the region. But at times Rushdie’s writing style gets annoyingly ethnic. I enjoyed the novel but wasn’t much impressed by it.
Thanks to Conrad Barwa who recommended this book to me. This is a good book which collects some stories of the riots and migrations that accompanied independence and partition of India in 1947. The book focuses on the Punjab, rightly so in my opinion since the Punjab is where most…
Initially, Muslim majority provinces were to form Pakistan and the rest India. States were to decide their future according to wishes of their people. Baluchistan, Sind, NWFP, Punjab and Bengal were Muslim majority provinces. It was decided to divide Punjab and Bengal ...
An interesting human interest story about the links between people from Indian Punjab and Pakistani Punjab. The closing of the India-Pakistan border 18 months ago has caused agony for Punjabi Muslims. But moves to restore road links have brought hope to the Muslim residents of one town in the Indian…
In "Pakistan"
By Zack
Dad, gadget guy, bookworm, political animal, global nomad, cyclist, hiker, tennis player, photographer
