Salman Rushdie'S Midnight'S Children by Reena Mitra

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, ever since its publication in 1980, has been considered an ingenious piece of literary art and a trendsetter in the field of Indian fiction in English. The stupendous success of this novel broke all previous records and Rushdie was hailed as one who engendered a whole new generation of fiction writers that embraced magical realism as a mode for the depiction of history. The variant mode of the portrayal of historical reality that Rushdie adopts in Midnight’s Children is characteristically his own and his fantasizing of facts in this novel inspired a host of other writers to offer, in their respective works, their own blends of fact and fiction. Midnight’s Children is a multi-faceted novel which lends itself to analysis from various angles and perspectives. Be it from the point of view of structure or content, the work yields a richness that has been variously explored by the scholars who have contributed to this anthology of essays on it.