Salman Rushdie’s last novel, 2019’s Booker Prize–short-listed Quichotte, blended elements of Don Quixote with a contemporary narrative to tell a modern parable about “junk culture” and the opioid crisis in America. And you … will see it all and tell its story.” The goddess adds that in this new empire, women are no longer to be treated like chattel. Through it all, Pampa, like Athena to Athens, makes her best attempts at divine intercession. So call it a feat of fidelity that later sections grow confusingly byzantine and the history lesson drags at points. The urge to understand ourselves in sacred terms developed not from the invention of history, but alongside it.
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