A fool’s dream

QUICHOTTE, THE BOOKER PRIZE LONG-LISTED 14th novel from Salman Rushdie, is pitched as a “Don Quixote for the modern age,” but the book—a brilliant, funny, world-encompassing wonder—is a far more ambitious exercise than mere homage.

The titular character (pronounced Key-shot) was born under a different name, in a city also under a different name: Bombay, now Mumbai. The Indian-immigrant traveling salesman of pharmaceuticals, aging, addled into holy foolishness by a lifetime of TV worship, and recently laid off, bestows the name Quichotte upon himself as a nod to Cervantes’ famous knight, or rather, as a nod to a French opera which was “loosely based” on the book. (“It seems you’re a little loosely based yourself,” Quichotte tells himself, aware that