Individual Influence on India's History in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children Alicia Lamlé

India – a subcontinent defined by its exceptional diversity, caused by its outstanding history. It has always been a country easy to love, but hard to describe. Salman Rushdie is said to be one of the first authors to have truly written from the heart of India’s people. In Midnight’s Children, the first book to win the prize of the “Best of the Bookers” (Weatherby 20), he successfully narrates the biography of Saleem Sinai, who is inextricably linked to his nation, as a commotion of disasters and triumphs that mirrors the course of modern India at its most impossible and glorious. One of the author’s many attractive qualities as a writer is his clever use of humorous images and metaphors to explain and discuss incredibly controversial and painful issues. He describes various debatable topics, stressing the theme of how of much impact one person can have on history. As the protagonist is born on the stroke of midnight at the precise moment of India’s Independence, he insists that his life is irrevocably connected to India’s post-colonialist journey to create its own history. August 15, 1947, the night of India’s Independence, is probably the most important date this century has contributed to the subcontinent. But can a...