Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (Hardbound - 2024)

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.

Reena Mitra is a Senior Reader in the Department of English, Christ Church College, Kanpur. She is a gold medallist, who began her career in teaching in 1970, with a two-year span in Lucknow University, from where she did her postgraduation in English the same year, topping the list of successful candidates in the University. In 1972 she joined Christ Church College as a lecturer. She was awarded her M.Phil. Degree in 1982 and did her Ph.D. in 1992, both from Kanpur University.

Dr. Mitra has evinced a keen interest in Indian fiction in English from the days of her postgraduation. She has to her credit two books entitled Indian English Fiction: History as a Mode of Literature and Critical Response to Literatures in English. She has also produced quality research work on The Indian English Fiction of Bhabani Bhattacharya and Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan’ and Manohar Malgonkar’s ‘A Bend in the Ganges’: A Comparative Study. In addition to these, she has presented a number of papers at national seminars and has contributed several articles to books and journals of great repute.