This document provides a critical study of Salman Rushdie's book "The Riddles of Midnight" prepared by Lajja Bhatt. It summarizes Rushdie's work, discussing how he examines post-colonial issues in India and Pakistan. Some of the key topics Rushdie addresses include the independence of India and Pakistan, communalism, religious faith, and whether nationalism is truly felt in people's hearts. The document also notes Rushdie's lucid yet sharp writing style and use of illustrations and rhetoric to elaborate his arguments.

1. The Riddles of Midnight:
Critical Study
Prepared by: Lajja Bhatt
Postcolonial Literature
Roll no 16 Enrollment No: PG13101003
Sem III
Department of English
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar
University
Bhavnagar

2. Salman Rushdie
• Salman Rushdie is an intelligent arbiter
• It is difficult to distinct him as novelist or
essayist or travel writer,screen writer etc.
• Controversial surroundings.
• Having great erudite.
• He remains aloof from ordinary sphere of
existence, abstract, aloof and distance.

3. Imaginary Homelands
• ‘books that draw new and better maps of reality,
and make new languages with which we can
understand the world.’(Salman Rushdie)
• ‘I’ Narrator.
• Having symbols, figures from different myth
systems
• Cultural exchange cheapen the literature.
• ‘is history to be considered the property of
the participants solely?’ (Shame- Rushdie)

4. The Riddles of
Midnight
• The India is the one nation and Pakistan is
another. Both are the ‘children of the
midnight’ of 15th August, 1947.
• Does India Exist?
• There can be word used for such big territory
& realm with great natural resources, is
‘commualism

5. The Riddles of
Midnight
• Communal Riots and Faith
• ‘ After all these religions are only words.what
is behind them is the same whichever faith is.’
• Here nationalism is in the mouth of the
people but hardly found in heart.

6. The Riddles of
Midnight
• The language of Rushdie is lucid.
• But it has some throny sharpness which pinch
the reader’s mind.
• Rushdie also uses the parenthesis in the
illustrative way.
• He has given good examples to elaborate his
point and makes arguments rhetoric.

7. References
• http://www.indiamarks.com/Salman-Rushdie-
An-author-novelist-essayist-and-sometime-critic/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxd19zXo
rWY&feature=player_embedded
• Shame