Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A little Bit of Bragging: Since the book in question picks up a lot of stuff from Sir Rushdie's life, let me brag about the only thing that connects me to him. I live next to the house where he used to spend his summer vacation as a child! (Not that I saw him! That was way before we moved there.) But the fact that Salman Rushdie owns a house in my neighbourhood and might someday walk in while I am taking a walk by Anees Villa makes me want to mention it because, believe it or not, I have fallen in love with his writing!

Ah! I digress! So, coming back to the point... Midnight's Children was lent to me by a friend sometime last year but something I don't like thinking about, made me drop the book and return it to her. By that time, I had finished about 400 pages of this long but captivating novel and couldn't get it out of my head so, I borrowed it again from the same friend, read it (finally) and am now reviewing it.

There is no reason why you should not read Midnight's Children because it is as close as magical realism can get to real life while keeping its dark, seductive charm intact. It has all the good elements of a great political commentary, a vivid imagination and a cocky yet innocent kind of humour very unique to writers like Salman Rushdie . In fact, this is one of the rare novels which is as close as any book can get to Arabian Nights while being simultaneously close to the narration of Gabriel García Márquez . Read Midnight's Children if you like magical-realism or step into the genre with it, read it if you like fairy-tales which talk about politics or political novels which are written like fairy-tales. It will get slow, it will be hard to read and yes, you might reach the point where you'd just want it to end but it is a book which will continue to haunt you unless and until you don't finish it!

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