Bookmarked Musings: Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy by Ramlal Agarwal

In this literary essay, Ramlal Agarwal talks about The God of Small Things and Midnight’s Children, dissecting the intricate layers of both books to reveal what works for him as a reader.

The two novels from India that are considered outstanding in the literary world outside India are Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and Roy’s The God of Small Things. The first one is about a comfortably settled Muslim family going through humiliation and degradation. The other is about a Syrian Christian family from the deep South that is slowly disintegrating and dissolving. Both novelists use English with abandon and as it suits them. Both have won the Booker Prize, have sold more than two million copies, and have been translated into more than twenty languages. However, they are unlike each other in more ways than one.

Rushdie livens up his story with magic realism, babas, forecasts, peep shows, big historical events, and treacheries hidden behind them. and social and political upheavals.