Midnight’s Children by Salman Rusdie

Chapter 1: Perforated Sheets

I probably need to read this again. The novel opens with an omniscient narrator recounting his life story beginning with the moment of his birth in India. Coincidentally, this event takes place with the official recognition and celebration of the country's independence from Britain. The narrator, Saleem Sinai, doesn’t think this is a mere coincidence. It has been prophesied. I suspect the author will weave the story of India’s independence with tales from the narrator’s life story who now, at age thirty-one is desperate to find or create meaning in his life. “I fear absurdity,” the narrator states. Oh great.

The narrator warns that he has many stories to tell, and that he feels no obligation to telling them chronologically. Time is “running out” and is of no use to him now. This attitude is reflected in the structure of the narrative which quickly shifts from event to event as the narrator hurriedly completes his task. “I must work fast,” he says, “faster than Scheherazade, if I am to end up meaning – yes, meaning, something.”

The narrator then begins a story about his grandfather who as a young man trained in Germany to be a doctor. He returns to India where he apparently intends to begin his medical practice. First though, he literally falls on his face one cold Kashmiri morning and vows to never again bow before man or god, a decision which leaves him feeling empty and “vulnerable to women and history.”

OK, I definitely need to read this again.