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Midnight's Children - A Review

Midnight’s children Midnight’s Children immediately reminds the reader of two other novels upon reading, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass. These are two of the major novels of twentieth century literature and foundation works of the genre of magical realism. Midnight’s Children falls comfortably into the same category of importance as these novels. As well as magical realism Midnight’s Children also encompasses several other literary modes such historical fiction and is considered an allegorical novel and a postcolonial novel. Despite the complexity of categorizing, the book itself is not difficult to read. The language and style which Rusdie employs provide an energy which powers the entire story. The allegory is that of the events in India leading up to independence and what follows after. The narrator of the book is Saleem Sinai who was born at the moment India gained independence on August 15 th 1947. He and ot...

Seminal novels that the author could have retired on (part 1)

The logic of this post is to list some novels that the author could have published and that'd have been enough to set them up as major in the writing history, even if they do have lots of other great works. Like Cervantes with Don Quixote . I'm going with books published after 1950. Some of these will probably be the only good book the author really did (like  Catch 22). In no particular order: 10. The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel )- 1959- Germany - German by G ü nter Grass 9. One Hundred Years of Solitude ( Cien a ñ os de soledad) - 1967- Colombia- Spanish by  Gabriel Garcia Marquez  8. Midnight's Children -1981- United Kingdom - English by  Salman Rushdie 7.  On the Road - 1957 - United States of America- English by Jack Kerouac  6. Catch-22 -1961- United States of America- English by Joseph Heller 5. Lord of the Flies - 1954- United Kingdom- English  by  William Golding 4. Beloved - 1987- United States of...

The Definitive Reading List (part3) - Magical Realism

10. The Shadow of the Wind -Carlos Ruiz Zafon -2001- Spain 9.The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz- 2007- Dominican Republic/USA 8. Everything Is Illuminated-Jonathan Safran Foer - 2002. USA 7.The Famished Road - Ben Okri -1992- Nigeria 6.In the Skin of a Lion - Michael Ondaatje -1987 - Sri Lanka/Canada 5. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez- 1985-Colombia 4.The Book of Laughter and Forgetting - Milan Kundera -1979- Czechoslovakia 3. The Tin Drum - Gunter Grass -1958 -Germany 2. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie -1981- UK 1.One Hundred Years of Solitude- Gabriel Garcia Marquez - 1967- Colombia