North Vancouver City Library Adult book club November book
Excerpts
- “I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I’m gone which would not have happened if I had not come.”
- “Memory’s truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else’s version more than his own.”
- “To understand just one life you have to swallow the world … do you wonder, then, that I was a heavy child?”
- “Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems – but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.”
- “I learned: the first lesson of my life: nobody can face the world with his eyes open all the time.”
- “What’s real and what’s true aren’t necessarily the same.”
- “Most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence.”
- “Children are the vessels into which adults pour their poison.”
- “What can’t be cured must be endured.”
- “Things, even people have a way of leaking into each other like flavours when you cook.”
- “Who what am I? My answer: I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I’ve gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each ‘I’, every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you’ll have to swallow the world.”
- “No people whose word for ‘yesterday’ is the same as their word for ‘tomorrow’ can be said to have a firm grip on the time.”
- “I fell victim to the temptation of every autobiographer, to the illusion that since the past exists only in one’s memories and the words which strive vainly to encapsulate them, it is possible to create past events simply by saying they occurred.”
- “For every snake, there is a ladder; for every ladder,a snake”
- “And my chutneys and kasaundies are, after all, connected to my nocturnal scribblings—by day amongst the pickle-vats, by night within these sheets, I spend my time at the great work of preserving. Memory, as well as fruit, is being saved from the corruption of the clocks.”
- “It was only a matter of time,” my father said, with every appearance of pleasure; but time has been an unsteady affair, in my experience, not a thing to be relied upon. It could even be partitioned: the clocks in Pakistan would run half an hour ahead of their Indian counterparts … Mr. Kemal, who wanted nothing to do with Partition, was fond of saying, “Here’s proof of the folly of the scheme! Those Leaguers plan to abscond with a whole thirty minutes! Time Without Partitions,” Mr. Kemal cried, “That’s the ticket!” And S. P. Butt said, “If they can change the time just like that, what’s real any more? I ask you? What’s true?”
- “I am the victim,” the Rani whispers, through photographed lips that never move, “the hapless victim of my cross-cultural concerns. My skin is the outward expression of the internationalism of my spirit.”
- “I told you the truth,” I say yet again, “Memory’s truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent versions of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else’s version more than his own.”
- “Symbolic value of the pickling process: all the six hundred million eggs which gave birth to the population of India could fit inside a single, standard-sized pickle-jar; six hundred million spermatozoa could be lifted on a single spoon. Every pickle-jar (you will forgive me if I become florid for a moment) contains, therefore, the most exalted of possibilities: the feasibility of the chutnification of history; the grand hope of the pickling of time! I, however, have pickled chapters.”
- “…because silence, too, has an echo, hollower and longer-lasting than the reverberations of any sound.”
- “Family history, of course, has its proper dietary laws. One is supposed to swallow and digest only the permitted parts of it, the halal portions of the past, drained of their redness, their blood. Unfortunately, this makes the stories less juicy…”
- “Things—even people—have a way of leaking into each other,” I explain, “like flavors when you cook.”
Notes & Thoughts
Honestly, this was a slog to get through. I’m struggling with the duality of having a deep appreciation of the depths and writing of this book while simultaneously not enjoying the actual reading of it…
Admittedly if it weren’t for the book club, I wouldn’t have finished the book. At over 600 pages, it was lengthy, but also dense.
- different levels of reality: political, personal, fantastical, factual
- Each is valid in its own right, yet each is a different perspective
- Magical realism. Events that really happened and adding in magical elements
- Mixing historical, philosophy, politics, family dynamics, symbolism
- Very literary, layered metaphors, very descriptive and particular voice
- Main character Saleem born at the moment of India’s indepdendence
- Sees himself as a physical embodiment of India’s history
- His body will crumble into 630 million pieces (the population of India at the time)
- Parallel between his individual body and all of India’s citizens
- Disintegration of his body at the end mirrors the literary fragmentation of the novel skipping back and forth through time and stories
- He is the child of a poor woman and an English father (who has returned to England) – he represents facets of modern India
- Falling in love in pieces – Saleem’s grandparents only seeing each other in glimpses over time. These create affection in pieces.
- Fall in love with each other in part, but struggled to recognize each other as whole people
- Pluralism and singularity
- E.g.: the peepshow box
- People looking at the world through a multiplicity of viewpoints and perspectives
- Meanwhile, the mob only sees the singularity of the peepshow box man’s religion, which almost costs his life
- What is truth?
- Saleeem’s family history is actually not his own (since he was switched at birth)
- Highlights the theme that truth is created and shaped, not fixed and static
- Truth is relative because he tells the history of Shiva’s as his own and believes it to be so
- Religious texts and history books claim truth that has been codified and accepted through time or faith
- History itself is filtered through individual’s perspectives
- Saleeem’s family history is actually not his own (since he was switched at birth)
- Memory and significance
- Events from the past gain significance when filtered through memory because it becomes part of that person’s story
- Events become significance when connections are made
- Good and evil
- Not as clear as we conventionally think
- Snakes and ladders or bad & good are seen as opposing and separate forces
- Real life shows these categories not so clearcut and the distinction ambiguous
- E.g.: Saleem’s life is saved by snake poison (which would traditionally be bad)
Midnight’s Children – A Novel by Salman Rushdie
NVCL Book Club Reading Guide
About the book
“Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,” all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts.
“This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Midnight’s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time” [publisher].
About the author
“Salman Rushdie is the author of fourteen previous novels, including Midnight’s Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker), Shame, The Satanic Verses, The Moor’s Last Sigh, and Quichotte, all of which have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize; a collection of stories, East, West; a memoir, Joseph Anton; a work of reportage, The Jaguar Smile; and three collections of essays, most recently Languages of Truth. His many awards include the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, which he won twice; the PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award; the National Arts Award; the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger; the European Union’s Aristeion Prize for Literature; the Budapest Grand Prize for Literature; and the Italian Premio Grinzane Cavour. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. He is a former president of PEN America. His books have been translated into over forty languages” [publisher].
Interviews and articles
The Booker Prizes: “Salman Rushdie has opened doors between the real world and imagined worlds – and for decades has been unafraid to pass through them”
Harvard Business Review: “Life’s Work: An Interview with Salman Rushdie” [September 2015]
Columbia University: Midnight’s Children Events: “Interview with Salman Rushdie & President Lee Bollinger”
The Guardian: “Salman Rushdie on Midnight’s Children at 40: ‘India is no longer the country of this novel’” [April 3, 2021]
The New Yorker: “The Disappeared: How the fatwa changed a writer’s life”, by Salman Rushdie [from the September 17, 2012 print issue; a subscription is needed to read online]
- Saleem Sinai is the book’s narrator, and he tells his life story to his future fiancée, Padma. Do you think he’s a reliable narrator? If not, are there particular moments when you questioned his narrative? If so, why?
- What role does Padma play in the novel? What does she add to the story? Do you think she considers Saleem a reliable narrator?
- What is the role of ‘family’ – biological or not? In particular, what is your understanding of Saleem’s relationship to the many fathers and mothers that he considers he had throughout his life?
- What are your impressions of Saleem’s grandparents, Aadam Aziz and Naseem Ghani (“Reverend Mother”)? Why do you think that so much of Book One was devoted to their story?
- Is there a particular character whose story you were drawn to the most? What role did they play in the novel?
- Is there a certain recurring symbol or theme that caught your attention the most (such as the perforated sheet, noses, the spittoon, optimism, etc.)? How come?
- The book weaves in many events from India’s history and takes place all across the Indian subcontinent. Do you think that you need prior knowledge of Indian history and geography to fully appreciate and understand the book? Did you research things as you read?
- What do you think Rushdie is trying to accomplish by using elements of magical realism in the story? How does it compare and contrast to the novel being a work of historical fiction?
- Rushdie uses a number of writing styles that could be called unconventional – long run-on sentences, a lack of commas, paragraphs that start with ‘…’. Did you like it? What do these techniques add to the novel?
- Did any parts of the book confuse you? Did you find any parts difficult to read?
- The book won the 1981 Booker Prize and twice won the Best of the Booker prize. Do you agree with these accolades? Why do you think that the book has achieved the status of a “classic”?
- How would you best describe Midnight’s Children to someone who hasn’t read it before?
- What stood out to you the most from reading Midnight’s Children? Did you learn anything new? Do you think you’ll re-read it in the future?