Introduction

Abstract

‘Reality can have metaphorical content’, declares Saleem Sinai midway through Salman Rushdie’s multi-award-winning novel, Midnight’s Children (1981); ‘that does not make it less real’ (1995a, p. 200). This is a striking statement, given that Rushdie’s narrator and protagonist actively invites allegorical readings of his exceptional life story. Born ‘at the precise instant of India’s arrival at independence’, Saleem famously announces on the novel’s first page that he is ‘handcuffed to history’ (p. 9) by what he presents as the momentous coincidence of his birth. As his narrative proceeds, the analogy between Saleem’s extraordinary infancy and development and that of the postcolonial ‘child-nation’ (p. 172) forms its central conceit. With a face resembling a map of India and telepathic powers that tune him in to events across the country, Saleem’s formative experiences unfold in tandem with the trajectory of the newly independent nation-state. Throughout the text he identifies intimately with India and, as the nation matures, its successes, failures and oppressions appear to be marked on his malleable body. In this context, Saleem’s assertion of the ‘real’ unsettles the privileged status granted to metaphor in the text. It not only destabilizes the novel’s key trope by insisting that Saleem is not reducible to metaphorical interpretation but also anticipates, and troubles, a huge body of critical readings that focus on the text’s staging of national allegory.¹