Salman Rushdie's Quichotte follows Ismail Smile, an aging pharmaceutical salesman who renames himself Quichotte after a lifetime of watching too much television, and who sets off on a quixotic road trip across America in pursuit of a former talk-show star he is convinced is his destined love. Accompanied by an imaginary son named Sancho who gradually becomes more real, Quichotte's journey is narrated within a novel being written by a struggling spy novelist named Sam DuChamp, whose own life mirrors and refracts his creation's. A dazzling, satirical riff on Cervantes's Don Quixote, the book roams across addiction, racism, celebrity culture, and estrangement between parents and children in an America saturated by screens and conspiracy.
Books mentioned in Quichotte (16)
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes: “The Magic Mountain, Madame Bovary, Don Quixote.”
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert: “The Magic Mountain, Madame Bovary, Don Quixote.”
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann: “The Magic Mountain, Madame Bovary, Don Quixote.”
The Clouds by Aristophanes: “In Aristophanes' play The Clouds, Socrates floats overhead in a balloon basket, getting high so he can elevate his thoughts.”
The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton: “The Secret Agent, The Man Who Was Thursday, tales of espionage and secret societies, these were his guides.”
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: “The Secret Agent, The Man Who Was Thursday, tales of espionage and secret societies, these were his guides.”
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams: “Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, had died after going to the gym as everyone in California was obliged to do by the state's unwritten laws.”
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky: “He's a rebel in a forest memorizing Crime and Punishment because all the great texts have to be memorized to survive because all the actual books have been burned.”
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury: “the temperature at which paper catches fire is two hundred and thirty-two point seven eight degrees Celsius, better known as Fahrenheit 451.”
The Lady of Shalott by Alfred Tennyson: “"The curse is come upon me," cried / The Lady of Shalott.”
The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus: “she did not fail to refer to Emma Lazarus's sonnet "The New Colossus." Mother of Exiles, check.”
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer: “He would be—to quote Chaucer's Canterbury Tales —her verray, parfit, gentil knyght.”
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller: “after seeing a production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman on TV, had refused to fire his relative, fearing that to do so would hasten the old fellow's demise.”
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: “He had tried to read Gone with the Wind and to learn the words of "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" and "Old Folks at Home," but fiction and music weren't his thing.”
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare: “the Lord Chamberlain's Men, Shakespeare's "playing company," staged the first ever night of Twelfth Night before Queen Elizabeth I, Gloriana herself, and a company of VIP guests.”
Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie: “The shadow of Peter Pan had escaped at one point also, and had had to be caught and reattached to Peter's feet by Wendy's deft and careful needle. (Low confidence: no explicit title/author citation, but the shadow-sewing detail is a specific, unmistakable plot point unique to Barrie's story, not a bare character name-drop.)”