About this title: Salman Rushdie won the Booker Prize for this novel, which follows the lives of children born on August 15, 1947, the day India became an independent nation. The book is simultaneously the story of one boy's coming of age, a chronicle of the growing pains of the new nation, and a family drama, all told in a magical-realist style that manages to be humorous and hopeful despite the gravity of the events depicted.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books
Date Published: 1991
ISBN-13:9780380580996ISBN:0380580993
Description: Fair. Cover shows wear and creases. Pages yellowed/tanned. May have name/note inside cover. No highlighting or underlining. Acceptable reading copy-Read it and pass it on! read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books, New York
Date Published: 1991
ISBN-13:9780140132700ISBN:0140132708
Description: Good + 23rd printing of this trade paperback edition. Underlining with margin notes through out. Smooth spine with light wear to the edges. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books
Date Published: 1991
ISBN-13:9780140132700ISBN:0140132708
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Cover show minor wear, spine uncreased; names written on dedication page, occasional underlining, circles & margin notes. read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Knopf Canada, Toronto, ON, Canada
Date Published: 1997
ISBN-13:9780676970654ISBN:0676970656
Description: Good + Cover has bumping, marks, chipping, sticker, scratches, dents-Marks & penmarks on edge-Edgewear to some pgs-Bumped / dogeared pgs-Few marks on pgs-Spine slant-Dents. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Very Good-; Penguin Books, New York
Date Published: 1991
ISBN-13:9780140132700ISBN:0140132708
Description: Reprint. Small 8vo 7½"-8" tall Creases in bottom of front cover and in top corner of pp. 79-80; marking and writing on p. 60; 533 pages; The author of The Stananic Verses creates a fascinating family saga about the birth and maturity of a land and its people--a brilliant incarnation of the human comedy. "Rushdie has achieved a magnificent and unique work of fiction. "--The Philadelphia Inquirer. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Pan Books, London
Date Published: 1982
Description: Poor. 8vo. Cover bumped, creased, chipped with rubbed edges. Pages browning with previous book price wrote in in front. Pages loose but still with book. read more
"This book was REALLY hard to get through. I kept stopping and starting. It reads like magical realism and is about the birth of independent India. The life story of the main character parallels that of the new republic. lots of cool details about kashmir, india and pakistan. I liked the historical references a lot even if the story was a bit hard to follow. Feels like I need to read it twice or something."
"I read this book while I was traveling through India, which made it infinitely relevant to me. It is written as an allegory about the time of India independence from the British in 1947 and the birth of a boy named Saleem Sinai at the exact same time as the birth of the new nation. The book links the two together and tells of things happening to Saleem in order to tell what was happening to India.
Not only does the book talk about historic events and political maneuverings, but it also talks about the smaller changes that were happening at an individual level. How the British left their mark, the role of religion for the Indian people, the magical things that seem to happen in India, marriages, changing identity when your name is changed, children's responsibility to the family, etc.
Not knowing much about India and Pakistan, this book taught me a lot. But it's also a masterpiece of a story. It is unbelievable how Rushdie has tied it all together. Definitely worth a read.
A random aside, after being in India and experiencing the "sacred cows", the following was one of my favorite passages:
"On Cornwallis Road it was a warm night. An insomniac cow, idly chewing a Red and White cigarette packet, strolled by a bundled street-sleeper, which meant he would wake in the morning, because a cow will ignore a sleeping man unless he's about to die. Then it nuzzles at him thoughtfully. Sacred cows eat anything.""
"The winner of the Booker of Booker Awards (voted the best Booker award winner from the last 25 years) this book is considered Rushdie's masterpiece. Following the life of a boy who was born on the stroke of midnight on the day India formally gained its independence from Great Britain, the boy's life and the growth of the new nation twist and turn together through 31 years. In sort of a Forrest Gump type plot line (or perhaps Forrest Gump has a Midnight's Children type plot line) major events in the life on the main character and major events in the evolution and devolution of his country occur at the same times and often are caused by each other. Rushdie tells us that to 'understand one life you must swallow the world' and the details, side stories, strange links made between seemingly independent events make you realize exactly what this statement means. Truly a masterpiece that gives a voice to India as a country brimming with contradictions, full of life, and growing and redefining itself at every step. There is no doubt in my mind that this book is as good as it gets, it is certainly one of the finest books written in the 20th Century."
"I have mixed feelings about this, and the whole project is so huge that I don't know what to say -- the closest analogue is probably "One Hundred Years of Solitude", and I definitely liked it better than that. It's a big national epic, and so on, and it has all sorts of crazy magical happenings. "The Tin Drum" is the same -- any novel with pretensions to "epic" status in the twentieth century has to resort to magic, I guess, because "realism" defines itself consciously against the very project of a national epic. Anyway, this is a sprawling novel that takes hundreds of pages to get into. It's worth it, though -- the last act is very powerful, and Rushdie is a phenomenal writer throughout. The book is also smarter than it's hackneyed "allegorical" status might imply -- both the author, and Saleem, know and do not know that the idea is simple-minded, and that's part of the tragedy. Whereas Grass and Marquez kind of want us to say, "Huh!" about their character's historical/ontological status, Rushdie wants us to feel pity and discover that maybe we all live ironic allegories. Lastly: I couldn't help hating him for his courtship of Padma (this sentence holds true both for Saleem, the main character, and for Rushdie himself)."
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