Midnight's Children
Rushdie, Salman
From Riverby Books, Fredericksburg, VA, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
AbeBooks Seller since June 4, 2001
From Riverby Books, Fredericksburg, VA, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
AbeBooks Seller since June 4, 2001
About this Item
Hardcover, with dust jacket. Gray paper and maroon cloth over boards with silver lettering to spine and front cover. Red dust jacket with black and red lettering. Dated 1981 on title page. Dated 1980 on copyright page. Stated first American edition. $13.95 price on dust jacket flap. 446 pages. Good condition. Binding is tight and square. Corners and spine lightly bumped. Paper is rubbed at corners. A thin line of sunning along the head and foot of the covers. A tiny spot of white discoloration, near the spine, on the front cover. Page edges faintly foxed. Pages otherwise bright and clean throughout. No other marks or writing. Dust jacket has been wrapped in protective mylar cover. Spine is very faintly sunned. The smallest touch of rubbing to the front corners. Jacket has light overall toning. A streak of staining to the interior front flap- it is slightly darker than the page and bleeds through to the other side. Otherwise clean and free of marks. Overall good condition. Please contact us with questions or if you would like to see photographs. Seller Inventory # Dowling-23
Bibliographic Details
Title: Midnight's Children
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Publication Date: 1981
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: 1st Edition
About this title
Rushdie's narrator, Saleem Sinai, is the Hindu child raised by wealthy Muslims. Near the beginning of the novel, he informs us that he is falling apart--literally:
I mean quite simply that I have begun to crack all over like an old jug--that my poor body, singular, unlovely, buffeted by too much history, subjected to drainage above and drainage below, mutilated by doors, brained by spittoons, has started coming apart at the seams. In short, I am literally disintegrating, slowly for the moment, although there are signs of an acceleration.In light of this unfortunate physical degeneration, Saleem has decided to write his life story, and, incidentally, that of India's, before he crumbles into "(approximately) six hundred and thirty million particles of anonymous, and necessarily oblivious, dust." It seems that within one hour of midnight on India's independence day, 1,001 children were born. All of those children were endowed with special powers: some can travel through time, for example; one can change gender. Saleem's gift is telepathy, and it is via this power that he discovers the truth of his birth: that he is, in fact, the product of the illicit coupling of an Indian mother and an English father, and has usurped another's place. His gift also reveals the identities of all the other children and the fact that it is in his power to gather them for a "midnight parliament" to save the nation. To do so, however, would lay him open to that other child, christened Shiva, who has grown up to be a brutish killer. Saleem's dilemma plays out against the backdrop of the first years of independence: the partition of India and Pakistan, the ascendancy of "The Widow" Indira Gandhi, war, and, eventually, the imposition of martial law.
We've seen this mix of magical thinking and political reality before in the works of Günter Grass and Gabriel García Márquez. What sets Rushdie apart is his mad prose pyrotechnics, the exuberant acrobatics of rhyme and alliteration, pun, wordplay, proper and "Babu" English chasing each other across the page in a dizzying, exhilarating cataract of words. Rushdie can be laugh-out-loud funny, but make no mistake--this is an angry book, and its author's outrage lends his language wings. Midnight's Children is Salman Rushdie's irate, affectionate love song to his native land--not so different from a Bombay talkie, after all. --Alix Wilber
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Store Description
Regular shipping by USPS Media Mail is $4. MEDIA MAIL SHIPPING DOES NOT INCLUDE TRACKING.
If you'd like tracking, please let us know before you place the order - We're happy to do it but it costs $1 extra because it means we have to print a shipping label for it individually, slowing down the shipping process considerably -- and we want to be able to keep basic shipping costs as low as we can.
We ship orders valued at more than $50 in a box, at no additional charge.
Priority mailing is for a Fla...
More InformationShipping costs are based on books weighing 2.2 LB, or 1 KG. If your book order is heavy or oversized, we may contact you to let you know extra shipping is required.
Payment Methods
accepted by seller