- Published: 29 August 2019
- ISBN: 9781473572072
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 416
Quichotte
- Published: 29 August 2019
- ISBN: 9781473572072
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 416
A delightful confection… Humane and humorous. Rushdie is in top form, serving up a fine piece of literary satire.
Kirkus Reviews *starred review*
Rushdie’s rambunctious latest... [is an] uproarious comedy… a brilliant rendition of the cheesy, sleazy, scary pandemonium of life in modern times.
Publishers Weekly *starred review*
Rushdie's dazzling and provocative improvisation on an essential classic has powerful resonance in this time of weaponized lies and denials.
Booklist *starred review*
This is the Rushdie we still need: eviscerator of the powers-that-be, who destroys rather than creates illusions... Here is a language adequate to our times.
Vidyan Ravin thiran, Telegraph
Quichotte overwhelms you from the first page with a lightning storm of ideas and a monsoon of exuberant prose… Quichotte has all the verbal pyrotechnics and outlandish invention that will be familiar to readers of Rushdie’s fourteen previous novels, but at the heart it is a serious and affecting tale about the irresistible pull of history… those who are prepared to sit back and enjoy the ride will encounter scenery like none they have ever seen.
Literary Review
A novel that is as sharp as a flick-knife and as clever as a barrel of monkeys... More than just another postmodern box of tricks, [Quichotte] is a novel that feeds the heart while it fills the mind.
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, The Times
Rushdie is one of the greats of his generation… But it’s rare for a writer to produce their best work towards the end of their career… Quichotte is one of the cleverest, most enjoyable metafictional capers this side of postmodernism… This novel can fly, it can float, it’s anecdotal, effervescent, charming, and a jolly good story to boot… Encore! Encore!
Claire Lowdon, Sunday Times
Very much a Don Quixote for our times… a wild, enjoyable ride.
Ian Thomson, Evening Standard
About a dozen pages into Quichotte, Salman Rushdie’s 14th novel, we read of an invention so devious, so outrageous, that it dispels any thought that the author’s imaginative powers might be waning… It’s a masterstroke in an uneven but diverting and occasionally brilliant novel… [and] a perfect fit for a moment of transcontinental derangement.
Christian Lorentzen, Financial Times
Rushdie’s most personal novel for years… a truly imaginative response to his own experience of exile and dislocation.
Allan Massie, Scotsman
A triumphant assault on the coarsened American sensibility… [A] packed, funny, melancholy, masterpiece of a novel.
Andrew Billen, The Times
Quichotte is funny… beautiful, lucid prose.
Johanna Thomas-Corr, Observer
This sardonic portrait of America combines exuberant humour with sober reflections on the toxic excesses of 21st-century media.
Max Davidson, Mail on Sunday
A fast-spinning postmodern double Catherine wheel – impossible not to be dazzled by… exhilarating.
Holly Williams, Independent
A brilliant, funny, world-encompassing wonder… His readers realize that they would happily follow Rushdie to the end of the world… a glimmer of hope, like an impossible dream, is left for us [in Quichotte].
Nicholas Mancusi, Time Magazine
A genre-hopping, cross-country picaresque which rips along with a great deal of wit, verve and empathy.
Dorian Lynskey, iNews
Rushdie’s fans will find much to love in this hyperactive, tenchicolour satire… Many balls are juggles here, but, somehow, Rushdie keeps them all gloriously in the air.
Claire Allfree, Daily Mail
Now in his eighth decade, it is clear he [Rushdie] still possesses the linguistic energy, resourcefulness and sheer amplitude of a writer half his age – buoyant and life-enhancing qualities shared by his great Spanish predecessor [Cervantes]
Jude Cook
[A] modern Don Quixote... Rushdie has created something that feels wholly original even if you’ve never heard of the hopelessly romantic Spanish knight-errant who sees danger in windmills... Lucky for us, there are true storytellers and Rushdie is near the top of that list. If you haven’t read him before, this is a good book to start with—it’s fabulist and funny while revealing an awful lot about the world we live in today.
Associated Press
Rushdie’s Booker-longlisted fourteenth novel is certainly the work of a frisky imagination... You can’t help being charmed by Rushdie’s largesse.
Guardian
Hilarious by all accounts.
LitHub
[Quichotte] is Don Quixote for our time, a smart satire of every aspect of the contemporary culture. Witty, profound, tender, this love story shows a fiction master at his brilliant best.
Millions
Rushdie’s novel is many things beyond just a Don Quixote retelling. It’s a satire on our contemporary fake-news, post-truth, Trumpian cultural moment, where the concept of reality itself is coming apart. It’s a sci-fi novel, a spy novel, a road trip novel, a work of magical realism. It’s a climate change parable, and an immigrant story in an era of anti-immigration feeling. It’s a love story that turns into a family drama... Characters, narratives and worlds collide and come apart in spectacular fashion, while Rushdie maintains an exhilarating control over it all.
Independent
Nothing but extraordinary... This incisively outlandish but lyrical meditation on intolerance, TV addiction, and the opioid crisis operates on multiple planes, with razor-sharp topicality and humor, delivering a reflective examination of the plight of marginalized personhood with veritable aplomb. Highly recommended.
Library Journal (starred review)
Quichotte is a story of breathtaking intellectual scope... Like Cervantes, Rushdie is able to balance his commentary with a voice full of tragicomic fervor, which makes the novel a thrilling adventure on a sentence-by-sentence level and another triumph for Rushdie.
Bookpage (starred review)
Quichotte is cleverly plotted and compellingly paced, a constant reminder that precious few writers can manoeuvre a sentence like Rushdie, and a moving story about love and the importance of family too… In other words, Quichotte is a sort of manifesto about the power of fiction.
Alexander Nurnberg, Times Literary Supplement
A meditation on life, death and the stories told about both.
UK Press Syndication
The fiction about fiction that takes the breath away… Quichotte expertly does it again.
Michael Wood, London Review of Books
Funny and touching and sad and oddly vulnerable, rather like its eponymous hero… [Quichotte is] compelling.
Lucasta Miller, Spectator
Rushdie is a master storyteller who weaves his fictions and characters into such agreeable tapestries.
Sarah Hayes, Tablet
The novel's dazzling virtuosity and cascade of cultural references culminate in a final moving moment of hope
Jane Shilling, Daily Mail