Midnight's children

I wanted to read this book for a long time. It sounds awesome, a kid born right at midnight as newly partitioned India officially is declared independent of Britian, and he eventually learns he has magic abilities that include the ability to communicate telepathically with all other kids that were born in the first hour since the country's birth.

It, however, is not good. I find nothing redeeming about this story. Nothing happens in the entire first section of the book, to the point the protagonist's wife even goes about interrupting the story asking him to get to the good part. It's kind of meta, but not in the fun way. When we got to section II it kept feeling like it was just about to get good, just enough to keep my reading. Yet, nothing ever came interesting. I read some 400 pages before I gave up on it.

If you do choose to read this for some reason I highly recommend skipping Part I.

Midnight’s children is de omvattende verwerking van Salman Rushdie (1947) van de postkoloniale periode in India. In 1981 won het de Booker Prize, waarna het nog een paar keer zou worden verkozen tot ‘Booker onder de Bookers’. Ik was ervan onder de indruk, al vrees ik dat een deel van de symboliek me ontging.

Het verhaal begint met de geboorte van Saleem Sinai op 15 augustus 1947 om middernacht, het moment waarop India onafhankelijk wordt. Rushdie beschrijft vervolgens in het eerste deel de familiegeschiedenis van Saleem. Daar zitten opmerkelijke verhalen tussen, zoals de ontmoeting van zijn grootouders: omdat oma klachten blijft verzinnen, keert opa als dienstdoend arts telkens terug, al mag hij haar slechts van achter een laken met een gat erin onderzoeken. Vervolgens beschrijft Rushdie in het tweede en derde deel de jonge jaren van Saleem, die samenvallen met de grote gebeurtenissen in India, in het bijzonder de burgeroorlogen waaruit Pakistan en Bangla Desh voortkomen.

Net als 1000 andere kinderen die in hetzelfde uur geboren zijn – een verwijzing naar de verhalen van duizend-en-een-nacht van Sjeherazade – is Saleem begiftigd met een superkracht: hij heeft telepathische vermogens. De krachten zijn zowel een zegen als vloek: als kinderen van de tijd is hun lot verbonden aan dat van het land. Door de hoge mate van magische realteit die Rushdie in zijn historische verhaal verwerkt, is het boek wel vergeleken met [b:One Hundred Years of Solitude|21032147|One Hundred Years of Solitude|Gabriel García Márquez|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1586182160l/21032147.SY75.jpg|3295655] van Gabriel García Márquez.

Het taalgebruik van Rushdie is rijk en inspirerend. Eén van de geestigste personages vond ik Padma, die Saleem voortdurend van commentaar voorziet bij het schrijven van zijn memoires. Daarentegen schoot het verhaal te vaak heen en weer, waardoor ik soms de draad kwijtraakte of de significantie van een passage me ontging. De verbinding van het persoonlijk leven van Saleem met de geschiedenis van India is interessant. Toevallig las ik onlangs [b:jl.|36892458|jl.|Anjet Daanje|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1591608126l/36892458.SY75.jpg|58653239] van Anjet Daanje, waarin het leven van een Groninger aan de wereldgeschiedenis is gekoppeld.

Dit jaar won [b:The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida|57224204|The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida|Shehan Karunatilaka|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1658847734l/57224204.SY75.jpg|89565815] van de Sri Lankese schrijver Shehan Karunatilaka de Booker Prize; de International Booker ging naar [b:Tomb of Sand|58703758|Tomb of Sand|Geetanjali Shree|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1628126156l/58703758.SY75.jpg|92372547] van de Indische Geetanjali Shree. Mede dankzij Rushdie heb ik zin me aan die werken te wagen.

A fictional autobiography of a child born at the moment India became independent in 1947.

And as the child grows up, he feels that the ups and downs of his own life mirror the fortunes of the country. Quite a long time ago I read a novel, [b:A bend in the Ganges|1966112|A Bend in the Ganges|Manohar Malgonkar|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1190998429l/1966112.SY75.jpg|1969250], set in the time of India's independence, and from that I knew it was beset by violence. That novel, like this one, followed the history of a family, and how the family was affected by the historical events. But [b:Midnight's Children|14836|Midnight's Children|Salman Rushdie|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1371063511l/14836.SY75.jpg|1024288] is no straightforward historical novel. It is surreal. Or perhaps paranormal. Or perhaps magic realism. It aims to show not the mere historical events, but the spiritual significance of them.

And so the children who were born at or immediately after midnight on 15 August 1947 are able to communicate with each other telepathically, and have abilities that science fiction writers of the 1950s used to indicate conventionally with the abbreviation PSI.

It is quite a dense and complex book, and I thought that, like some long and complex Russian novels, it needed a list of Dramatis Personae that one could refer to. There are so many characters that when one finds a reference to something that happened to one of them 150 pages earlier, one needs to reread the earlier incident to remember what happened and who was involved. But that means it is not the kind of book to read once and throw away. There ware things that will become clearer on a second or third, or even a seventh or eighth reading.

But now I have to take it back to the library. A few years ago I tried to read [b:The Satanic Verses|12781|The Satanic Verses|Salman Rushdie|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1281988101l/12781.SX50.jpg|1434467] by the same author, and couldn't finish it. I found it too boring and confusing. If iot was satire, it was satirising things beyond my experience, which I couldn't connect to. But [b:Midnight's Children|14836|Midnight's Children|Salman Rushdie|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1371063511l/14836.SY75.jpg|1024288] reminded me of a song from 50 years ago:

Yesterday's dream didn't quite come true
We fought for our freedom and what did it do?
Now no one can see where they stand.

This celebrated novel has been reviewed so many times already that mine will seem superfluous. So, these are simply some thoughts I had...

Rushdie's use of magical realism and humor soften what is actually a devastatingly sad story. Having Saleem tell his story to another person (Padma) makes it possible for Rushdie to occasionally remind his readers of what has come before without sounding redundant. The story also skips around in time, and involves many people. It's a family saga and historical novel which handles religion, politics, love, hate, envy, revenge,caste, food, poverty, fear, and hope. There are many fascinating tales contained within this novel.

Rushdie has an intriguing storytelling style, the way he weaves all of Saleem's past lives together into the entire tapestry of one man's life. In the beginning, when Saleem first starts to tell his stories to Padma, I assumed that he was an old man. However, Saleem is only thirty (30) years old. Obviously, he has seen more than most do in a long lifetime.

Midnight's Children is densely written, and I initially thought that it would be a tough read. Fortunately, I found it easy to get so absorbed that it no longer seemed that way at all.

I'm very glad I finally read this!