Quichotte

By: Salman Rushdie

Narrated by: Vikas Adam

Length: 16 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's summary

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2019

Penguin presents the audio edition of Quichotte by Salman Rushdie. 

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 best-selling 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 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 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. And 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.

©2019 Salman Rushdie (P)2019 Penguin Audio

Wow!!!

This is the first Salman Rushdie novel I have completed (it will not be my last). It took me a while to get into it, but once I was in I was hooked. Its light, funny, and my god the range of the author goes for miles. A real artist of the word.

The narrator is the best I’ve ever heard. He makes the novel come alive and does wonderful impersonations.

I wouldn’t recommend this to everyone, but if your bored, and looking for something to stir the imagination give this a go.

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

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.

would definitely recommend

loved it, found the narration hard to get used to but after a chapter I was obsessed.

Am I In The Novel ?

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.

Amazing as always

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

Typical of Rushdies writing style. Took me 2 years to finish

Now, I usually get through audibles quickly. However, for a long time I just couldn’t get into it and it became background noise. However, probably around 6 hours in. I fell in love and it was exquisitely performed. Well done to the performers for really bringing to life a beautiful tale.

Loved it

This is a great book and the performance really helped bring it to life. It gripped me and I just had to listen to a next chapter.

strong performance of an ok story

To me, this book finds Rushdie in form again, but the story lacks the consistency and brilliance of Midnight's Children or the Satanic Versies. The great performance partially makes up for the lesser parts and the forced humor. Still, if you are a fan, I van recommend it.

Beautiful but ...

What it is: it’s elegantly and densely written with more going on per square inch than you’d get in any number of best sellers; it’s funny and poignant and about very human concerns; it’s realism then magical realism then fantasy then hallucinated speculative science fiction; it’s full of references to contemporary music, politics, comedy, TV, films, art, life; it picks its convoluted path through this Quixotian landscape on cats’ feet in wellies; and it’s totally literary, it has all the badges.

What it isn’t: it’s never pretentious; it’s not self-important or up itself; its elegance doesn’t come at the expense of readability; its real world references aren’t shoe-horned in; it’s not clever-clever; it isn’t laughing at us struggling to keep up with it; it doesn’t play tricks on us; it’s never malign; it doesn’t make a meal of itself. But it’s not very interesting.

My view, obviously, but I couldn’t get behind its characters despite the intensity of their experiences, and I persevered only because it was in audio and the narrator was exceptional and engaging. On the plus side, my interest came alive in the last few pages, so while this book was written for someone who can love it for itself, I want the one those last pages promised.

Didn't think I was listening to a story

this is a book with rigorous one-sided, self conceited, propaganda. there is so much subtext that the story never comes together. it is too ideological for what we may tag as a novel. I find the incessant stream of the characters' consciousness very tedious. I would however still recommend this book to people who are very passionate about gender equality and role reversal. I am also quite aware, that my feminist bias has played a significant role, in what I have reached as my conclusion of the text.
it strikes me as an ideological text; that is desperate to propagate the contemporary "tolerant mindset" and still be light-hearted about the whole affair. this has suppressed nonfiction undertone written all over it.

Keyshot

Although not my favourite Rushdie work I loved it very much. Until the last chapters made the rest of the story clear I thought it more absurdist than magical-realist, but the ending changed my mind.

This would have been a difficult book for me to read so the excellent narration of Vikas Adam was very much appreciated. He brings each individual character to life with their own unique voice and I was particularly impressed with his female voices.