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Midnight's Children (Vintage Classics) | 
| Author: Salman Rushdie
Publisher: Vintage Classics
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy New: £4.79
You Save: £3.20 (40%)
New (29) Used (5) from £3.79
Avg. Customer Rating:  42 reviews
Sales Rank: 1115
Media: Paperback
Pages: 672
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.1 x 2
ISBN: 0099511894
EAN: 9780099511892
ASIN: 0099511894
Publication Date: May 1, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.co.uk Review
Before Salman Rushdie had that problem with a certain religious-political figure with a serious need to chill out, he'd already shown he was an important literary force. Quite simply, Midnight's Children is amazing--fun, beautiful, erudite, both fairy tale and political narrative told through a supernatural narrator who is caught between different worlds. Though it's a big book, with big themes of India's nationhood and of ethnic and personal identity, it's far from a dry history lesson. Rushdie tells the story in his own brand of magical realism, with a prose of lyrical, transcendent goofiness.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 37 more reviews...
 Rich and beautiful but too cold for me. November 22, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The language is as multi-layered and detailed as a Klimt, the imagery, rich and dense as Christmas cake - there's no doubt Midnight's Children is a unique and remarkable book, but I found, at it's core, it was too coldly detached. I never truly connected to Saleem or any of the characters, or the epic, grasshopper story. I was always slightly outside his world, looking in through closed blinds.
Some books - the books that live on in my mind long after - are the ones that embrace you, wrap you in a warm, soft blanket of themselves and draw you in completely and, awed though I was by the literary achievement (and it is an incredible tour de force, almost certainly deserving the over-used `genius' tag) I could never count it amongst my favourites.
It *is*a fantastical, magical, delight of a book. I did like it very much and thoroughly recommend it as a must read for almost everyone really but especially anyone who loves magical realism and vast, epic fantasy worlds. It's clearly a masterpiece - but I doubt very much if I shall want to read it again anytime soon.
 Disappointing and dull September 18, 2008
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
It's hard to live up to the "Booker of Bookers" tag but this comes nowhere near. Rushdie can write: bursts of compelling narrative display that. Unfortunately the whole story is trussed up in that clever "flash-back", "flash-forward" conceit which eventually bored me. No, I didn't finish it. I got a little further than I did with Ulysses, but eventually hurled this into the same Pseud Bin.
I've read somewhere that the author intends the time switching to be like the digressions of an oral storyteller but I think that's like trying to capture ballet in a poem or the moon in a bucket. The device is overused and tiresome. Want a Third World Magic Realism Family Saga? try "House of the Spirits".
 An important, and dare I say enjoyable read August 20, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Whatever controversies arise from Rushdie one cannot but marvel at the depths of his imagination. Midnight's Children whilst containing some of the most beautiful language and imagery is no easy read. As with most Rushdie novels we venture into the world of magic realism and we witness the life of a child born on the stroke of midnight hour when Nehru announces the "tryst with dynasty". Born with special powers Saleem is witness through the whirlwind of events that make up India's first thirty years and we see his attempted interfering. Again with Rushdie's novels we're unable to sympathise with any of the characters but nevertheless the strength of the writing keeps us plodding through.
The emporer's new clothes.... August 18, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
Having read and enjoyed many of the finest authors of the 19th & 20th century (including many Indian authors) I felt I had to explore Rushdie. What a mistake - pretentious, self-indulgent claptrap.
 Comment on previous review August 12, 2008
9 out of 12 found this review helpful
I would not usually indulge in a review. It is only reading the previous review that has prompted, less than a reply, than a reaction.
Midnight's Children is a good book. Does this make me a fraud? No, it just happened that I enjoyed it, savoured it's scope, it's humour, it's allegory - all of this is not difficult to grasp, only if some people did not try so hard. When a person put the word intellectual in brackets it is fairly obvious that they see a distinct 'us and you'mentality in the literary world. And as much as there are the literary squabblers and vacous acedemic blabbers, these do not rule the litrary roost.
Midnight's children is a book to be read without too much initial analysis. Lap up the world inside the book, not the underlying allegory of Indian independance. Laugh and Saleem's akwardness, do not over-exert yourself by picking apart each sentence. Ride along with this book and you will enjoy it.
I think a large part of the problem is the current image of Rusdhie. He is a celebrity, but for all the wrong reasons. Ignore Rushdie and listen to Saleem himself, it is the work and not the author your reading here.
I find it hard to believe that the previous reveiwer actually finished the book. And these literary deathmatches (Nabakov is better than Rusdhie) are pointless defences for a floundering argument.
I suggest that you ignore the last review and make your own mind up.
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