Title: Quichotte
Author: Salman Rushdie
Publisher: Penguin Random
House India
ISBN: 978-0670092796
Language: English
Pages: 416
Genre: Literary Fiction
As Fernando Pessoa says “we, all who live, have a life that
is lived and another life that is thought”
Quichotte by Salman Rushdie is the universe of tales and
interpersonal emotions, where each character, on their own quest of seeking
love, either salesperson or a spy-thriller writer.
It is an intellectual and playful novel that has been
shortlisted for the Booker prize 2019. Rushdie reinvented 17th
century Cervantes’s Don Quixote and we experience very vision but from the
cerebral of 21st Century, realities alter in terms of socio-political
culture.
Basically, Rushdie’s Quichotte is the story of Ismail Smile,
a retired salesperson of pharmaceutical products, who binge-watches fancy TV
shows, twist comes when he falls in love with a woman on TV, and put himself on
a quest of seeking love, Now this woman is an interesting character herself,
named Salma R, she has an Indian origin, living in New York though, She is host of talk-show, somewhat like
Oprah. To win her love, Ismail, adapts a name Quichotte and starts sending her
letters, although he behaves like a quaint stalker yet the love and madness he
carries inside, he is the protagonist and the most intriguing character; you
urge to explore him anyway.
In between Quichotte invents an imaginary son, Sancho, who
takes small fraction of his life, I think, Sancho is the only one who carries
an innocent voice among myriad of characters, he slowly evaluates his place,
fuming with anger and atrocity.
In next few chapters,
you realize, Quichotte might be hero of the book but he is not real, he is just
a fictionalized character written by Sam Du-Camp, Ok Here, you have to pull off
your dreamland as you have been getting introduced to new character, This Sam
Du-camp is a spy-thriller writer, comes to realization that his whole life
crumpled among lies and now he wants to write something real.
As in science projects, you need to construct a flow chart
into your mind, you need to do the same while exploring next chapters, because
there are not couple of plots but subplots and various tales and references, it
is a wild trip, characters do clash, worlds rebuild and it really demands of a
reader every ounce of attention.
My own feeling is that Salman Rushdie has enjoyed romancing
with different genres, wisely though. There is whole list of TV shows
and quick-witted mentions of fake news. Somewhere I felt it is a magical
realism, and it also has a spy writer, and there are road trips, and that’s not
an end of the list. It feels funny to explore this multi-universe, on the next
moment you urge to have some space to breathe.
Quichotte is a novel that shows us the mirror to make us
realize what happens when misinformation gobbles the fact and surviving amidst
insane world.
“Everything sounds like a lot,” Sancho said.
“All of us are in two stories at the same time,” said the sandwich
lady. “Life and Times. There is our own personal story, and the bigger story of
what’s happening around us. When both are in trouble simultaneously, when the
crisis inside you intersects with the crisis outside you, things get a little
crazy.”
Rushdie’s Quichotte is a delicate circle, quick-witted book,
unfolds satire on reality shows, cyber war, along with some notable issues like
sexual assault, racism, suicide, inkling of immigration, religion’s beliefs,
and corporate trickery.
I have read Rushdie before and absolutely loved his
Midnight’s Children. I am not denying the fact he has his own readership. By
Quichotte, Rushdie has shown to the world, he is not afraid pushing his limits even
at this age and certainly it is a brave step; the universe he documented will
breathe through these pages. No matter what pro-critics say but I genuinely
feel this is social commentary of an era, much needed work, maybe for
offspring.
“A zillion channels and nothing to hold them together.
Garbage out there, and great stuff out there, too, and they both coexist at the
same level of reality, both give off the same air of authority. How’s a young
person supposed to tell them apart? Every show on every network tells you the same
thing: based upon a true story… true story is there’s no true story anymore.”
The only thing interrupted into this novel is usage of
superabundant wordplay and pop culture references, as I was not aware of most
of them so had to Google everything, turns it into a slow-read.
All in all, it is a Pandora box of human behaviour, carries
two worlds side by side, Quichotte’s pursuit of love and a spy novelist’s troubles.
This picaresque novel surely deserves a read.
About
the Author
Salman
Rushdie is the author of thirteen previous novels - Grimus, Midnight's
Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the
Booker), Shame, The Satanic Verses, Haroun and the Sea of
Stories, The Moor's Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her
Feet, Fury, Shalimar the Clown, The Enchantress of
Florence, Luka and the Fire of Life, Two Years, Eight Months, and
Twenty-Eight Nights and The Golden House - and one collection of
short stories: East, West. He has also published four works of non-fiction
- Joseph Anton, The Jaguar Smile, Imaginary
Homelands and Step Across This Line - and co-edited two
anthologies, Mirrorwork and Best American Short Stories 2008. He
is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Distinguished
Writer in Residence at New York University. A former president of PEN American
Center, Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature.
