Rushdie has long been one of the most accomplished writers on the planet and not only is it business as usual, his wascally wabbit wambunctiousness is also still evident. The magical realism that brought Rushdie fame comes to the fore when Quichotte wishes upon a meteor shower and Hey Presto! a fifteen-year-old monochrome-skinned boy (his Sancho Panza) materialises in his car. So he reinvents himself as Quichotte, the gallant knight in pursuit of her Grail.

Inspired by 'The Bachelorette' TV show, his Quixotic quest (some might call it stalking) is to zealously pursue a beautiful television personality - namely Miss Salma R, daughter of a former Bollywood actress - with whom he is unwholesomely infatuated. In a present-day twist to de Cervantes' Don Quixote, our bewildered anti-hero is one Ismail Smile, an Indian chap with retreating mental powers who binge-watches 'Housewives From Wherever' and any other daytime crap that takes his fancy. That said, Rushdie has never quite been able to summon the artistry that guided him to write Midnight's Children Happily, this devil-may-care, genre-bending, post-modernist fable marks a welcome return to form. 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.Īnyone who has read my reviews (you crazy fools) will know that Sir Salman Rushdie has long been one of my literary heroes and that I feel he has lost his magic touch of late (we wants it, we needs it, nasty hobbitses!) 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. Meanwhile his creator, in a midlife crisis, has equally urgent challenges of his own. 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”. 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. 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.

Quichotte review