Through hundreds of hours of junk television Smile has become obsessed by an Indian American talk show queen, Oprah's heir apparent, the beautiful, sophisticated but troubled Salma R. Rushdie has clearly done his research here and his knowledge of the ins and outs of The Bachelor, soap operas and marquee television is impressive and maybe a little worrying. Smile, a travelling opiate salesman working for his wealthy cousin who has become unhinged by endless motel daytime TV viewing. New York is a kind of no man's land from which he observes the follies of Trump's America, Brexit Britain and Narendra Modi's India. Sick and tired of being an ageing mid-list thriller writer (ouch), Brother has decided to write a literary novel about the current state of affairs as he looks with a jaded eye at a world seemingly gone mad. This is not a rewriting of Don Quixote for the modern era, rather it is a loose adaptation, as they say in Hollywood, "inspired" by the events and themes of Cervantes' masterpiece. These are the "real" protagonists of the novel but as in the second part of Don Quixote the fictional world begins bleeding into reality and vice-versa. Salman Rushdie embraces the influences of science fiction in Quichotte.
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