Leftover Novel

Novel Salman Rushdie’s latest book touches upon themes like reality vs illusion, racism and gun control, but they all seem scattered and superficial.

- Anuja Chauhan

Surely I deserve a gold medal? A laurel wreath, a gilded trophy, a Nishan-e-Haidar, a Param Vir Chakra, a best-in-show ribbon? I have ploughed doggedly through all of Salman Rushdie’s Quichotte and emerged at the other end bloated as a thesaurus, reeling from an overdose of literary, musical and trash TV references, with my vocabulary enriched and my grey cells severely depleted. What a ride! When it ended, I staggered out of the expensive hardback vehicle I had been strapped on to, fell on my knees and kissed the ground hard.

Quichotte is a rambling, shambling road-trip novel within a novel, written by a Rushdie-esque author called Sam DuChamp, who has been writing mediocre spy thrillers for years, but who now, perhaps because of his estrangement from his son, called Son, and his sister, called Sister, feels moved to write something different. So, he creates an ageing travelling salesman called Quichotte, a riff on Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote, who works for a shady pharmaceutical company. Quichotte, because his brain is addled from watching too much trash TV, falls in love with an American daytime talk show star called Salma R., who is also a daughter and granddaughter of Bollywood royalty. And, just like Quixote, he sets off to woo and win the lady, who is addicted to opioid medication.