This article was published in September 1981 in the NY review of books, a biweekly magazine founded in 1963 which deals mainly with politics and culture -in particular literature- , which can explain why Towers had so much space to write his review.
Robert Towers: died at 72 in 1995. teacher who taught at some of the most important colleges in the US including Princeton where he started his career , then Queens College for 20 y, and finally at Columbia university in NY where he served as chairman of the graduate writing division (of the Columbia School of the Arts from 1984 to 1989. )
He was also a novelist and he published 3 novels. The first one was entitled " the necklace of Kali " (1960) which was largely based on his own experience since he spent 2 years (in the diplomatic corps) as Vice Consul in the American consulate (general) in Calcutta observing the violent Muslim-Hindu struggle (vie point of westerner). He left India in 1947 a few weeks before the independence was proclaimed.
He was also well known for his numerous critics/reviews of fiction for many publications including The New York Times, Newsweek and the NY review of books.
So based on his personal background in India and his own experience as a novelist dealing with this particular period of Indian history, it’s pretty easy to understand why he was the one chosen by the magazine to review Midnight’s Children. And it’s also no surprise that when Rushdie wrote an article for the LA Times, he said that it was one of the 3 reviews that he remembered and really appreciated.
It’s also interesting to see that the review is divided in 3 main parts just like Rushdie’s Book is divided into 3 books. The first part of the review would be the introduction that is about a page long and present an overview of the beginning of the story with a long quote and a longer analogy of the whole book. Then the second part is a very long narrative summary over 2 pages long that covers...