Quichotte (Random House, $28), the Booker short-listed new novel by Salman Rushdie, is a retelling of the 400-year-old tale of Don Quixote adapted to today’s digital era. Ismail Smile is a pharmaceutical salesman who loses his job and sets off across America, accompanied by his imaginary son Sancho, to win the heart of Salma R, a TV star he’s fallen in love with. Then, however,
we learn that this is just a story within a larger story and that Quichotte, as Ismail signs himself in his love letters to Salma, is a character in a draft of a novel written by a mediocre crime novelist
named Sam DuChamp. Mind boggling in a true Rushdie way, full of pop culture references, strange characters, and even stranger occurrences, the novel is a mirror of the times we live in, reflecting
back to us how estranged we’ve become, as we perpetually look for love via our phone, computer, or TV screens, all the while living in the fantasy world rather than the real one. But as Rushdie’s wise protagonist tells us, this is “the Age of Anything-Can-Happen”, hey?
