Quixotic fiction and novel writing in Salman Rushdie’s Quichotte (2019)

Abstract

Salman Rushdie’s novel Quichotte belongs to the tradition of Quixotic fiction in English-language literature. It also revisits some of the central themes of Rushdie’s earlier works. This paper considers how, in this novel, Rushdie emulates Don Quixote in order to delve into two of his most fundamental concerns as a novelist: (1) the satire of social attitudes toward immigration and cultural identity, and (2) the art of novel writing. This analysis will show Rushdie’s postmodern and postcolonial bent in his approach to social issues. More specifically, it will reveal the ways in which Rushdie, as a present-day reader and author, reads and construes Cervantes’s novel.