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Quichotte

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Quichotte

By: Salman Rushdie
Narrated by: Vikas Adam
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Summary

** SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019 **

Brought to you by Penguin.

In a tour-de-force that is both an homage to an immortal work of literature and a modern masterpiece about the quest for love and family, Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie has created a dazzling Don Quixote for the modern age.

Inspired by the Cervantes classic, Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, a courtly, addled salesman obsessed with television, who falls in impossible love with the TV star Salman R. Together with his (imaginary) son Sancho, Quichotte sets off on a picaresque quest across America to prove worthy of her hand, gallantly braving the tragicomic perils of an age where 'Anything-Can-Happen'. Meanwhile his creator, in a midlife crisis, has equally urgent challenges of his own.

Just as Cervantes wrote Don Quixote to satirise the culture of his time, Rushdie takes the reader on a wild ride through a country on the verge of moral and spiritual collapse, with the kind of storytelling magic that is the hallmark of his work. The fully realised lives of DuChamp and Quichotte intertwine in a profoundly human quest for love and a wickedly entertaining portrait of an age in which fact is so often indiscernible from fiction.

 Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Satire Fiction
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Critic reviews

Rushdie is one of the greats of his generation… But it’s rare for a writer to produce their best work towards the end of their career… Quichotte is one of the cleverest, most enjoyable metafictional capers this side of postmodernism… This novel can fly, it can float, it’s anecdotal, effervescent, charming, and a jolly good story to boot… Encore! Encore!
A brilliant, funny, world-encompassing wonder… His readers realize that they would happily follow Rushdie to the end of the world… a glimmer of hope, like an impossible dream, is left for us [in Quichotte].
A triumphant assault on the coarsened American sensibility… [A] packed, funny, melancholy, masterpiece of a novel.
A novel that is as sharp as a flick-knife and as clever as a barrel of monkeys... More than just another postmodern box of tricks, [Quichotte] is a novel that feeds the heart while it fills the mind.
Rushdie’s fans will find much to love in this hyperactive, tenchicolour satire… Many balls are juggles here, but, somehow, Rushdie keeps them all gloriously in the air.
Quichotte is cleverly plotted and compellingly paced, a constant reminder that precious few writers can manoeuvre a sentence like Rushdie, and a moving story about love and the importance of family too… In other words, Quichotte is a sort of manifesto about the power of fiction.
A fast-spinning postmodern double Catherine wheel – impossible not to be dazzled by… exhilarating.
This is the Rushdie we still need: eviscerator of the powers-that-be, who destroys rather than creates illusions... Here is a language adequate to our times.
Very much a Don Quixote for our times… a wild, enjoyable ride.
[A] modern Don Quixote... Rushdie has created something that feels wholly original even if you’ve never heard of the hopelessly romantic Spanish knight-errant who sees danger in windmills... Lucky for us, there are true storytellers and Rushdie is near the top of that list. If you haven’t read him before, this is a good book to start with—it’s fabulist and funny while revealing an awful lot about the world we live in today.
All stars
Most relevant
Brilliant book, superbly narrated. This is a complex book, that references a number of genres, most particularly magic realism and meta narrative, that the narrator handles brilliantly. Probably my favourite book of the year.

Excellent

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I want to support the under dog, I don't want to be telling you that Rushdie is a genius, you know that.
But this is humble, witty, readable and yet huge, ambitious and enlightening. What more can a novel be.
He does keep explaining himself, but maybe we deserve that. Look at the mess we have made of the world.

Wish I could find fault with this book but I can't

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Rushdie has an incredible imagination and I always get immersed in his world. His characters feel so real.

Amazing as always

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excellent take on the current obsession with reality TV, big pharma, and all that us 'sound bite'.

don't try to understand, just get washed along.

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Before I write my brief review of Quichotte by Salman Rushdie, I must give my position on Satanic Verses. First of all, I believe in freedom of speech. Secondly, I am opposed to blasphemy or mockery of religion. Thirdly, censorship is necessary even in mature democracies with freedom of expression. Fourthly, if the consequences of the publication of a book exceed the benefits then it should not be published or alternatively destroyed. For these reasons, I opposed the sale of Satanic Verses and am critical of Salman Rushdie for doing it. However, we are best served by remembering all those who lost their lives, on both sides, but otherwise treat the scandal as being in the past. I must also add that I did not read the book but should not be criticised for not doing so. It upset and angered many Muslims and that is the point. Should Salman Rushdie be forever condemned ? No, the matter is now closed.

Quichotte is the first book I have read by the author and will soon follow this by reading his most famous work - Midnight’s Children. I must say, Quichotte is an excellent contemporary novel which for the most part is set in Trump’s America with everything that entails. Quichotte is a character in a novel within the novel and written by the author in the main novel, if that all makes sense, it will if you read it. Not exactly a new technique, it is similar to that employed by Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective, which happens to be my favourite TV drama series but it adds a fascinating dimension. It is a book that covers the biggest issues of our time - end of the world, racism, love, obsession, the power of television, pharmaceutical ethics, terrorism, drug abuse, reality and fake reality. The novel packs a lot in and is hugely entertaining. It enters my personal list of favourite novels.

Am I In The Novel ?

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