As we reached the end, satisfied, having sated our (intellectual and culinary) hunger, I felt a little uneasy because the whole night we had been discussing India and Pakistan and on the next table were an expat couple (their timidity signaling a preliminary stage of their dating) one American born Indian (an ABCD) the other asian/oriental. If they end up reading this post I’d like to apologise to them, but they can rest assured that we had the best intentions in the world. And I do not mean it as in the proverb which seems to sum up one of the morals of Shalimar The Clown, “the road to hell is paved with the cobblestones of best intentions”.

I discovered Midnight’s Children in a bookstore in Mumbai eight and a half years ago and was more than pleasantly surprised as soon as I began reading it on the train from Agra to Delhi. Back then, my knowledge of Rushdie was limited to the controversy after the fatwa and I must say I am quite angry with the whole cacophony that has shrouded the beauty of his writing.

Kitaplar Labyrinths (Labirentler), Jorge Luis Borges Trainspotting (Trainspotting), Irvine Welsh Marabou Stork Nightmares, Irvine Welsh İnce Memed, Yaşar Kemal Benim Adım Kırmızı, Orhan Pamuk Brave New World (Cesur Yeni Dünya), Aldous Huxley Lord of the Flies (Sineklerin Tanrısı), William Golding The Misanthrope, Moliere Das Parfum (Koku), Patrick Süskind Midnight’s Children (Geceyarısı Çocukları), Salman Rushdie New [...]