Name: Quichotte
ISBN: 9781787331921

Salman Rushdie

***SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019*** 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 Quixotefor 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 Quixoteto 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.

A Novel

Quichotte

It took me three tries to read this book, and oh boy, the first two times should've sufficed. I wanted this book to be something it was not, a modern retelling of Quijote, for which it only stands place as a cheap imitation. I thought I would be missing something if I decided not to venture further into the depths of the book. Over and over I was proved wrong about my choice to continue forward. 

A book that keeps on taking from you while it bashes you in the face. Some good writing at first it's a bit like you're being pushed off a cliff in a barrel and then despite the cliffs you end up rolling down some hills, see some greenery here and there, see some animals, but that doesn't make it a camping trip. The thing is the literature hurts all the way down. It doesn't get much better than this battering. The benefit is the writing becomes less flowery punishment and slightly more readable content. Dare I say the flowery writing is more like poison ivy, it begins off in many parts of the book to confuse you, you get so many superfluous details that the poor reader is unsure how necessary any of it is.

What of the story? Lots of parallels in this story-within-a-story lots of parallels to a modern-day world in many ways a world that's ending, the mastodons, appearances and disappearances. Nevertheless, the book will rob you of far too much time to justify its existence. Not the worst book I've read this year, but I'd give it a slot in the top 10 at least.

BC Hark

 ⭐ 1.25 

It took me three tries to read this book, and oh boy, the first two times should've sufficed. I wanted this book to be something it was not, a modern retelling of Quijote, for which it only stands place as a cheap imitation. I thought I would be missing something if I decided not to venture further into the depths of the book. Over and over I was proved wrong about my choice to continue forward. 

A book that keeps on taking from you while it bashes you in the face. Some good writing at first it's a bit like you're being pushed off a cliff in a barrel and then despite the cliffs you end up rolling down some hills, see some greenery here and there, see some animals, but that doesn't make it a camping trip. The thing is the literature hurts all the way down. It doesn't get much better than this battering. The benefit is the writing becomes less flowery punishment and slightly more readable content. Dare I say the flowery writing is more like poison ivy, it begins off in many parts of the book to confuse you, you get so many superfluous details that the poor reader is unsure how necessary any of it is.

What of the story? Lots of parallels in this story-within-a-story lots of parallels to a modern-day world in many ways a world that's ending, the mastodons, appearances and disappearances. Nevertheless, the book will rob you of far too much time to justify its existence. Not the worst book I've read this year, but I'd give it a slot in the top 10 at least.

Sonja H

Ich bin großer Fan von Salman Rushdie, der immer wieder zu überraschen vermag und es mit seinem neuesten Werk auf die Shortlist des Man Booker Prize 2019 geschafft hat.

„Quichotte“ ist grob angelehnt an „Don Quichotte“ von Miguel de Cervantes, bedient sich aber auch an anderen Werken und Genres. Man findet hier eine wilde Mischung aus Büchern, Filmen, Figuren der Öffentlichkeit,…

Es ist die Geschichte eines von Trash-TV verblendeten Mannes, der sich auf die Mission begibt, seinen geliebten Fernsehstar zu erobern, unterwegs einen Sohn erfindet und seltsame Dinge erlebt.
Es ist aber auch die Geschichte eines Spionageautors, der seine Familienprobleme mithilfe Quichottes fiktiv verarbeitet.

Rushdie gelingt es ausgesprochen gut, Fiktion und Realität in diesem Buch zu verweben. Zwar treibt er es hier bewusst auf die Spitze, dennoch lässt sich nicht leugnen, dass unser Leben nicht nur aus Fakten besteht. Wir alle erschaffen unsere eigene Welt. Wir tagträumen, wir fantasieren und immer wieder finden wir uns früher oder später in einer Situation, die zu unseren Gedankenspielen passt. Wir alle schreiben unsere Geschichte selbst, mal mehr, mal weniger gelungen.

Zwar steht in diesem Roman das Thema „Familie“ stark im Vordergrund, doch es werden auch aktuelle Probleme beleuchtet wie beispielsweise Immigration, Rassismus und Missbrauch jeglicher Art.

„Quichotte“ ist ein großartiges Werk, das mir stellenweise allerdings ein ganz klein wenig zu übertrieben war, aber dennoch kann ich es sehr empfehlen und bin gespannt, ob es den diesjährigen Man Booker Prize gewinnen wird.

Cindy Lieberman

4.5 stars. A story within a story about an older man who falls in love with a woman of questionable moral background and embarks upon a quest to win her love. It’s Man of LaMancha updated for our times with our persistent reality TV, opioids, racism and strange politics. It’s a story about family secrets and forgiveness. I’d give it the full 5 stars except for the magical ending which felt like the publisher insisted on a completed manuscript before the author himself was convinced he had the right ending. He even suggests this in the text with a nod to Einstein. Rushdie may know the ending is right but has not provided adequate proof for this reader. An enjoyable ride in every other respect. Excellent audiobook narration.

***SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019*** 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. **A DAILY TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR**

Maytal

This was a pretty fun read! My first Salman Rushdie book and really enjoyed his play with fantasy and reality.

Cindy

This is honestly a lot.

Rushdie's writing style can toe a fine line between complex and extra, and when it works, it works (see: Midnight's Children, Haroun and the Sea of Stories). In Quichotte, it gets meta: there's a narrative baked in a narrative. Sometimes they parallel each other. The novel gets chaotic to the point of utter bombast. The references to modern-day life feel hamfisted at times (e.g. humans that turn into mastodons, the Big Pharma and Elon Musk humanizations), often crammed, and often little more than a checklist of pop culture allusions ("graduating to a Rolls-Royce after years spent behind a Nissan Qashqai. It was colour after a lifetime of black-and-white, Monroe after Mansfield, Margaux after Hobnob, Cervantes after Avellaneda, Hammett after Spillane...").

However, in the moments when Rushdie cuts past the namedrops and the literary allusions, there lies beautiful prose and a deftly layered plot. But it gets bogged down by its own critique and bluster that it can be a fatiguing, maybe even pyrrhic, journey to get there.

Daryl Houston

Sometimes I wish it was easier to read books without knowing who the authors are. If I had read this one without knowing Rushdie had written it, I think I would have figured it was sort of amateurish -- a neat idea with some fun enough writing, but on the whole not a particularly accomplished work. Great authors write duds, but the thing about it is that I lack the confidence in my own smarts to know whether the book is sort of so-so or whether maybe I'm just too dumb to appreciate it. If I didn't know it was written by someone who I know is well respected, maybe I'd approach it more confidently. Much of the book felt to me like sort of a minimalist version of what Barth and Pynchon and heck, probably even Cervantes, often take to (sometimes annoying) extremes. Maybe it's just Rushdie's shtick (I've read only one or maybe two others of his), or maybe he's doing some sort of takedown of that style. To me it felt a little phoned-in, the gags not really earned by the work they appear in. I liked it ok, but it wasn't a real winner to me.

Liz Prinz

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE Quichotte is a love story of profound tenderness and humanity from a great storyteller at his brilliant best. Wise, beautifully written, as heartbreaking as it is wildly comic, its characters unforgettable, its plot dazzlingly suspenseful, it illuminates our corrupt times where fact is so often indiscernible from fiction. Quichotte, an aging travelling salesman obsessed with TV, is on a quest for love. Unfortunately, his daily diet of reality TV, sitcoms, films and soaps has distorted his ability to separate fantasy from reality. He wishes an imaginary son, Sancho, into existence, while obsessively writing love letters to a celebrity he knows only through his screen. Together the two innocents set off across America in Quichotte's trusty Chevy Cruze to find her and convince her of his love. Quichotte's story is told by Sam DuChamp, a mediocre spy novelist in the midst of a midlife crisis, and as the stories of DuChamp and Quichotte intertwine, we are taken on a wild, picaresque journey through a familiar country on the edge of moral and spiritual collapse.

Joyce

Heather Margaret

***SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019*** In a tour-de-force that is 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.

Lindy

Klaus Eck

Landon Alder

Ture Strange Nilsson

"Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie delivers an utterly modern remake ofDon Quixote with an epic love story set in the Age of Anything Can Happen"--.

Quichotte A Novel