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A review by juliancoolian
Quichotte by Salman Rushdie
adventurous
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Having never read Don Quijote or anything by Rushdie before, I picked this book up on a whim (from the sales shelf) because I found the first few pages quite funny and charming. Now, a few years later, I finally got around to reading it and MAN is this a modernist/postmodern joyride.
We have an author (Rushdie) writing about an author (Brother) writing about the eponymous ageing traveling salesman with a somewhat loose grip on reality and a tight obsession with a TV-persona named „Salma R“. The alert reader will not fail to notice that Rushdie named this glossy uber-Operah after himself. Accordingly, when Salma R is to star in her first American movie „her character‘s name was deliberately written to echo her own, deliberately chosen to blur the distinction between the actress and her screen persona“. And in this manner the book keeps folding in on itself and on „our reality“. And like an olympian gymnast, after a vertigo-inducing series of contortions and convulsions it finally comes out standing straight and solid.
I think it‘s also this blurring of the lines between our reality, the books reality, the book-in-books reality and Quichotte‘s own reality that makes for a very adequate use of magical realism. Because when in this world, which in many ways closely resembles our own, part of the population suddenly turns into violent mammoths and you think to yourself „hey wait a minute that can‘t be real“ it strangely reminds you that you‘re reading a work of fiction anyway and by definition none of it is real. The only thing that matters is if you can empathize with it and learn/heal/think/laugh/feel/…
We have an author (Rushdie) writing about an author (Brother) writing about the eponymous ageing traveling salesman with a somewhat loose grip on reality and a tight obsession with a TV-persona named „Salma R“. The alert reader will not fail to notice that Rushdie named this glossy uber-Operah after himself. Accordingly, when Salma R is to star in her first American movie „her character‘s name was deliberately written to echo her own, deliberately chosen to blur the distinction between the actress and her screen persona“. And in this manner the book keeps folding in on itself and on „our reality“. And like an olympian gymnast, after a vertigo-inducing series of contortions and convulsions it finally comes out standing straight and solid.
I think it‘s also this blurring of the lines between our reality, the books reality, the book-in-books reality and Quichotte‘s own reality that makes for a very adequate use of magical realism. Because when in this world, which in many ways closely resembles our own, part of the population suddenly turns into violent mammoths and you think to yourself „hey wait a minute that can‘t be real“ it strangely reminds you that you‘re reading a work of fiction anyway and by definition none of it is real. The only thing that matters is if you can empathize with it and learn/heal/think/laugh/feel/…
Content Warnings
Minor: Pedophilia