Quichotte

A Novel

By: Salman Rushdie

Narrated by: Vikas Adam

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER

An epic Don Quixote for the modern age, “a brilliant, funny, world-encompassing wonder” (Time) from internationally best-selling author Salman Rushdie

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE

“Lovely, unsentimental, heart-affirming...a remembrance of what holds our human lives in some equilibrium - a way of feeling and a way of telling. Love and language.” (Jeanette Winterson, The New York Times Book Review)

Named One of The Best Books of The Year by Time and NPR

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 a TV star. 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 satirize the culture of his time, Rushdie takes the listener on a wild ride through a country on the verge of moral and spiritual collapse. And with the kind of storytelling magic that is the hallmark of Rushdie's work, the fully realized 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.

Praise for Quichotte

“Brilliant...a perfect fit for a moment of transcontinental derangement.” (Financial Times)

“Quichotte is one of the cleverest, most enjoyable metafictional capers this side of postmodernism.... The narration is fleet of foot, always one step ahead of the reader - somewhere between a pinball machine and a three-dimensional game of snakes and ladders.... This novel can fly, it can float, it’s anecdotal, effervescent, charming, and a jolly good story to boot.” (The Sunday Times)

“Quichotte [is] an updating of Cervantes’ story that proves to be an equally complicated literary encounter, jumbling together a chivalric quest, a satire on Trump’s America and a whole lot of postmodern playfulness in a novel that is as sharp as a flick-knife and as clever as a barrel of monkeys.... This is a novel that feeds the heart while it fills the mind.” (The Times, UK)

©2019 Salman Rushdie (P)2019 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Rushdie weaves together all of his subjects, sharply observed, with extraordinary elegance and wit.... Cervantes’s hero, who is eternally modern perhaps because he is essentially anti-contemporary, couldn’t be a more inspired transplant into the mad reality of the present day, which Rushdie sends up in terms both universal and highly specific, tragic and hilarious, strange but hauntingly familiar.... At least here’s something worth reading as civilization crumbles around us, before we succumb to our fates. Right?” (Entertainment Weekly)

“Quichotte is a novel that attempts to reflect back to us the total, crumbling insanity of living in a world unmoored from reality - that shows what happens when lies become as good as facts.... And if Quichotte drives you nuts, that’s fine. It’s meant to. It’s layered in such a way that you will lose yourself in the shifting reality of it.” (NPR)

“Quichotte, Rushdie’s Trump-era reworking of Cervantes’s Don Quixote, is a frantically inventive take on ‘the Age of Anything-Can-Happen’ we’ve endured these last few years. It’s a concoction of narratives within narratives that blends the latest news headlines with apocalyptic flights of fancy.... Rushdie doesn’t offer much hope for our dispiriting times. But in a frayed and feverish way, he captures their flavor exactly.” (The Boston Globe)

A Break From Reality

I usually don't read a lot of fiction, and I was good with the start for the journey of the beloved. Then it got kinda weird and lines were blurred. But, in the end, I guess that is the point?

interesting spin to the current situation

The first few chapters were hard to get the context but as I progressed it became clear and interesting. I loved the way the stories were intertwined, and touched everything that is happening right now.

UNIQUE BUT ENTERTAINING

I REALLY LIKED ALL THE REFERENCES TO OUR CURRENT SOCIETY AND CULTURE IN THE STORY

A struggle - not my thing.

I wanted to like this story but the narrator was a struggle to listen to and the story itself lost me. Maybe I would have different comments if I read the book.

Five Stars Re Not Enough

I’ve put off reviewing this book since I finished it a week ago. That is because I don’t have the reviewing skills to do it justice. So let me just say that was far and away my favorite bo

not my favorite

I like Rushdie's writing a lot. but this is not my favorite. it is rooted in modern cultural climate, and I suspect this book will have more impact in a future read. but I found this work less satisfying and engaging.

Perfect read for my soul-searching roadtip

I mean what could be more appropriate when you’re seeking than don Quixote. Beautifully lyric, unpredictable and complex

Bloated, with flashes of brilliance

Two deranged soap operas, a story within a story, echo one another, as they address madness, obsession, fantasy and escapism in today's world of synthetic pop culture. It is a very busy book that mixes all sorts of genres, but the mood remains mostly comical. The science fiction aspect of it reminded me a bit of Kurt Vonnegut. There are references to Cervantes' masterpiece, of course, but let's just say that this is a Quixote from a distant parallel universe, with little similarity in style with the original.

Rushdie explores in the book violence and mental health issues in the US. One of its characters is a crazy stalker who carries a gun that speaks to him seductively. Alas, not long after publishing the book, the author suffered a knife attack in New York State by the hand of a mindless Shiite fanatic who hunted him down. Thankfully, he survived the stabbing.

I actually loved some of the feverishly kaleidoscopic passages and the sprinkled nuggets of wisdom, but they are too few and far between. Some parts drag on and by the time that I reached the second half, I was already looking forward to the ending. I’m glad to have listened to the audiobook, but I think it could have used more editing.

The narrator, Vikas Adam, is as hyperactive as the job demands and is amazing at producing all kinds of different voices and accents.

Sublime

The most balanced tale within a tale (within a tale?) I have read/listened to. A master course on writing but more fun to experience. Thank you

Wonderful fantasy

Classic Rushdie. Magical realism but with that underlying sadness and longing that he has in all his books. Vijay Adam’s performance is magnificent. He has an uncanny ability to give each character a distinctive voice.