Salman Rushdie's Imaginary Mirror

Abstract

In this paper, I highlight the interconnectedness of postmodernism (with the focus on poststructuralism), postcolonialism, and magical realism, suggesting that the two modes meet in Midnight’s Children. I give insights into Rushdie’s novel through these different modes of literary and cultural criticism to emphasize the impossibility of a one-sided analysis. As it must be considered through different filters of interpretation, so the novel can be understood on multiple levels, because, just as India and its people, the narrative presents a world which is divided, multicultural and complex.