Salman Rushdie’s famous hits, Midnight’s Children (1981) and
Shame (1983), form part of a literature of richness in language and
technical innovation that regenerated the English literature of the eighties.
A study of the technique, vocabulary and literary figures, the importance
of colours, numbers, and sensations, of parody and metaphor
is made in this paper, to highlight the fireworks of a language of magic
realism and political fancy and satire.