Quichotte

A Novel

By: Salman Rushdie

Narrated by: Vikas Adam

Length: 16 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's Summary

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’s synthesizing energy, the way he brings together ancient myth and old story, contemporary incident and archetypal emotion, transfigures reason into a waking dream.” (Los Angeles Times)

“An exuberantly imagined and lacerating homage to the revered satire Don Quixote.... This spellbinding, many-limbed saga of lives derailing in the ‘Age of Anything-Can-Happen’ is a wily frolic and a seismic denunciation. Rushdie meshes shrewd, parodic humor with intensifying suspense and pervasive sympathy, seeding this picaresque doomsday adventure with literary and television allusions and philosophical musings. As his vivid, passionate, and imperiled characters are confronted with racism, sexism, displacement, family ruptures, opioid addiction, disease, cyber warfare, and planetary convulsions, they valiantly seek the transcendence of love....Rushdie’s dazzling and provocative improvisation on an essential classic has powerful resonance in this time of weaponized lies and denials.” (Booklist, starred review) 

“Everywhere he takes us there is both love and war, in strange and terrifying combinations, painted in swaying, swirling, world-eating prose that annihilates the borders between East and West, love and hate, our private lives and the history we make.” (Time) 

Tough to follow, closes strong

I think this would be best read and not listened to. Although I will say that the narration is really, really good on this novel.

That said, I had a lot of trouble following the story line and the character building in the early part. The last third of the book is much more engaging and drama-filled and I did not feel cheated at the end,

This was my first Rushdie book and I was left unimpressed overall. I would strongly recommend a physical book and/or Kindle version.

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

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.

My first Salman Rushdie. I am hooked!

Quichotte was the first book that I have read by Salman Rushdie. Whimsical, magical, and just fun. Fly with him on his magic carpet of imagination and explore the world through current as well as historical eyes makes it overall fun to read.
The story weaves between truth and life, which can be quite bleak, and the story that the writer is writing within the story, which carries contemporary culture and the problems of the world with sweet-natured escapism.
I loved the book and now must go and purchase some of his others.

Different levels of reality

A novel has different levels of reality. The level of the reader, that of the novelist, that of the characters. In this case, the logically central character is also a novelist, who created the title character. Quichotte himself also creates a character, who knows Quichotte, but suspects the other levels. This character also has a sort of Jimeny Cricket character who might be in on the whole scheme.

Interesting plays as it all works out, with the stories intertwining. If they hook up with Rushdie's own story, he isn't telling.

I found the ending a little abrupt.

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?

The Best Narration I have Ever Heard

First, a word about Vikas Adam, the Audible narrator of this fascinating book. It is the best narration of the 134 Audible books I have heard. He has a remarkable way of giving voice to multiple characters (male and female) speaking mostly English with accents of Hindi (what Mr. Rushdie calls Southern Asia), England, Italy and various American inflections including New York, California and rural middle America. I have no idea how he does it, but he is a genius and the Audible book is worth a listen just for his skills.
Mr. Rushdie’s is one of the world’s great English writers and this book blends so many themes not the least of which is Cervantes’ Don Quixote which after the Bible is the most translated book in the world. Like Don Quixote it follows a man driven by the impossible: a love of a woman he has never met but whom he sees on television. She is an Indian Oprah Winfrey who has become famous in the United States after a quixotic life in India. The characters are numerous and memorable, some imagined, and some brought to life from nothing. The story weaves from the story’s characters to the author/creator of the characters, his life and beyond. It is a wonderful journey, unique and in many ways. The story sometimes mirrors Mr. Rushdie’s life and experiences. At many times one wonders where he is going and why, but that is the point. It is at times funny, frustrating and overly complex, but Mr. Rushdie’s style is always wondrous and delightful. It is well worth the trip.

A fantastic Don Q for the 21st century.

Rushdie demonstrates that he is a brilliant reader of Cervantes, a maze of broken stories, the blur of reality and fiction, the play between popular culture and high literature. Every word is a gem. But the performance of Vikas Adam is also outstanding, playing characters and accents like a master, I love his Italian Beppe Grillo. Not to be missed!

Still delivers the goods...

Rushdie delivers again with wonderful dialog, vibrant fleshed-out characters, and surprises until the end. I quite enjoyed it!

16 hours of an old man's soapboxing

The protagonist of Quichotte is a man whose mental illness worsens after a stroke, leading him to stalk a famous actress. A teenage son sprouts from his imagination and also stalks a woman whom he once met briefly. (A quote: 'When she said, "go away", I know that she meant "come back."') Even knowing that these unrequited feelings are inspired by Don Quixote's pining for his Dulcinea, the modern setting and more detailed explorations of their mindsets makes the whole thing seem creepier and more sinister than Don Quixote, and isn't helped by the total lack of Cervantes' humour or wit.

Rushdie has plenty to say about the state of modern America, but his observations are nothing you haven't heard a hundred times before. The setup of 'father and son on a road trip' – yes, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is mentioned – is just an excuse for the father figure to rant on about current social and political issues. I'm convinced that one character moved to England just so that Rushdie could squeeze in some commentary about the UK too.

There are some magical and meta twists and turns, but the plot feels formulaic, and these won't come as a surprise if you've read anything else from the author. Though serious issues are brought up, they are addressed in a shallow way that doesn't give insight or inspire empathy. In reviewing this book, the New York Times described Rushdie as 'a writer in free fall', and I'm inclined to agree.