Midnight Children, Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie's Midnight Children is a based on a genre called Magical realism.

I have been influenced by all the literary work based on Magical realism. And that includes Gabriel Garcia Marquez. 

Sound: The Sounds that I have in mind are realistic but with sparkle of magic. They might be radio voice

announcing the events that happened in 1947 with a lighter magical note.

Theme: The story is set in 1947. Its about the children born at 12 o clock on 15th August 1947. These children are suppose to have some magical powers.

The technique of magical realism finds liberal expression throughout the novel and is crucial to constructing the parallel to the country's history. Nicholas Stewart in his essay, "Magic realism in relation to the post-colonial and Midnight's Children," argues that the "narrative framework of Midnight's Children consists of a tale – comprising his life story – which Saleem Sinai recounts orally to his wife-to-be Padma. This self-referential narrative (within a single paragraph Saleem refers to himself in the first person: 'And I, wishing upon myself the curse of Nadir Khan.' 'I tell you,' Saleem cried, 'it is true. ...') recalls indigenous Indian culture, particularly the similarly orally recounted Arabian Nights. The events in Rushdie's text also parallel the magical nature of the narratives recounted in Arabian Nights (consider the attempt to electrocute Saleem at the latrine (p.353), or his journey in the 'basket of invisibility' (p.383))." He also notes that, "the narrative comprises and compresses Indian cultural history. 'Once upon a time,' Saleem muses, 'there were Radha and Krishna, and Rama and Sita, and Laila and Majnun; also (because we are not unaffected by the West) Romeo and Juliet, and Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn,". Stewart (citing Hutcheon) suggests that Midnight's Children chronologically entwines characters from both India and the West, "with post-colonial Indian history to examine both the effect of these indigenous and non-indigenous cultures on the Indian mind and in the light of Indian independence."^[