This section contains 430 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) |
Shame stands to Midnight's Children very much as Pakistan to India; a smaller book for a meaner world. To embody a nation in a book, yes; but the kind of book called forth by India, the ultimate 'loose and baggy monster', can hardly be repeated for India's angry appendage, that sad artificial afterbirth of Independence. Entering a world less known, and less loved, Rushdie discovers a wasteland. Midnight's Children may have been triggered by the shame of India's emergency, yet India remained throughout the book a magnificent possibility. Pakistan, the Land of the Pure, was in Rushdie's account a mistake from the start, 'a failure of the dreaming mind'. Its shame engulfs all. (p. 93)
Rushdie begins in fairytale, more or less beguiling; but as the book continues, the invented characters are elbowed more and more out of centre, and History hogs the floor.
It was Brecht who best...
This section contains 430 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) |