With the publication of Midnight's Children, Rushdie opened a new page in the annals of Indian English writing—indeed, in the entire field of English language literature. That book, according to many critics, effected a change in the "English" novel comparable to the revolution of the word unleashed by Joyce's Ulysses, opening the field so that it was "less insular and more international," as Morace states, and encouraging other writers from the former British Empire to "write back with a vengeance." Midnight's Children introduced what appears to be the central concern of Rushdie's writing life—the mapping of what he calls "an ancient civilization but it's also a new country." He is referring to the entire Indian Subcontinent, including Pakistan and Bangladesh, and his expressed intention is to provide readers with "imaginative maps" to act as guides to an emerging nation. As the scholar...