"I'm black and white in a full colour universe"
Salman Rushdie's Booker Prize nominated novel Quichottte (pronounced key-SHOT) is a contemporary road-trip novel inspired by Cervantes' Don Quixote (1605). In Rushdie's update a pharmaceutical salesman 'of Indian origin, advancing years and retreating mental powers' sets off, with his son Sancho, across America in search of his obsession, Bollywood actress turned TV star Salma R.
The road-trip itself takes in myriad towns across the US allowing Rushdie the perfect opportunity to use his literature to comment on Trumpism, celebrity culture, climate change, xenophobia and the opioid crisis. As a state of the nation piece this is insightful, intelligent and, at times, highly entertaining writing with level of satire that Cervantes would doubtless applaud. Yet with Salman Rushdie there is typically more at play.
The road-trip is framed as a story within a story about a second rate spy writer, with the pen name Sam DuChamp, who creates the character Quichotte and his son Sancho who is invisible to everyone but his father. This narrative flourish, with a nod to the Cervantes source text, proves essential as the story becomes increasingly fantastic - at one point a talking cricket appears to console Sancho in a tribute to Pinocchio, later the inhabitants of one town transform into mastodons, the mammoth like creatures whose fossilised remains turn up across North America, as their ideology becomes increasingly prehistoric.
The road-trip is framed as a story within a story about a second rate spy writer, with the pen name Sam DuChamp, who creates the character Quichotte and his son Sancho who is invisible to everyone but his father. This narrative flourish, with a nod to the Cervantes source text, proves essential as the story becomes increasingly fantastic - at one point a talking cricket appears to console Sancho in a tribute to Pinocchio, later the inhabitants of one town transform into mastodons, the mammoth like creatures whose fossilised remains turn up across North America, as their ideology becomes increasingly prehistoric.
If there is a problem with Quichotte it is that Rushdie tries to do too much with the story. Though there are road trip elements the novel has more in common with the surrealist melancholy of Haruki Murakami or Franz Kafka; 'I'm black and white in a full colour universe' Sancho realises as he tries to understand his nature.
There are times when Rushdie's own voice becomes over-bearing as the writer of the novel speaks about the spy thriller writer who has written a story about a salesman, its exhausting. Nontheless, overall Quichotte is an expertly told story that rides the zeitgeist like a modern day Don Quixote.
There are times when Rushdie's own voice becomes over-bearing as the writer of the novel speaks about the spy thriller writer who has written a story about a salesman, its exhausting. Nontheless, overall Quichotte is an expertly told story that rides the zeitgeist like a modern day Don Quixote.
Remarkable, challenging and thought provoking 4.5
Quichotte by Salman Rushdie published by Jonathan Cape 416 pages
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