I’ve had a kind of love/hate relationship with the works of Rushdie for a long time. Now I think I’ve gone into a more “watch and see what he comes up with next” mode. This is neither “I hate it” (Shame) nor “I love it’ (The Satanic Verses), but rather somewhere in the middle like The Enchantress of Florence.

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Quichotte
Salman Rushdie
2019 / 396 pages
read by Sasha Rotermund – 15h 38m
rating – 8.75 / contempt lit fiction
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As is evident from the title the gist of the book is a take-off of Don Quixote by Cervantes. A man has a great quest to find his love and in this case must pass through seven valleys.

Quichotte is the invented drug salesman of Dr. R. M Smile, a drug salesman and a writer of books. As it turns out Quichotte’s life turns out to be a kind of mirror of Smile’s. But then Quichotte invents an “imaginary” son who develops a character of his own and in that way we get stories within stories which include troubled sisters and a lot of travel and other complex back-stories. Finally there’s the story of Sancho himself who wants to be a “real boy.”

If you like Rushdie you’ll enjoy this although it’s a bit over-the-top even for him. If not, don’t bother. Fwiw, my favorites:

1. The Satanic Verses
2. Midnight’s Children
3. The Golden House
4. The Empress of Florence
5. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
6. The Moor’s Last Sigh
7. (others)