Don Quixote's Delusions - Hardcover

France, Miranda

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0297842773 ISBN 13: 9780297842774

Publisher: TRAFALGAR SQUARE +, 2001

Synopsis

When in 1987 Miranda France spent a year living in Madrid, the post-dictatorship ebullience was at its height - pornography and soft drugs were legalized alongside more basic freedoms, such as divorce, party-affiliation and kissing in the street. In 1999 she returns to make a journey through the great cities and towns of central Spain Madrid, Toledo, Segovia, Salamanca and others. Much has changed in 10 years. But much has also endured, as she learns from people she meets, who include a private detective, a shepherd, various nuns, belly dancers and a Castilian separatist. She also discovers that Cervante's "Don Quixote", published in 1605, and the most translated book after the Bible, helps to explain the Spanish character: todays Spaniards still suffer from Quixotic delusions and are as stubborn, inflexible and unrealistic as they have always been.

About this title

About the Author:

Miranda France was born in 1966 and was brought up in East Anglia and Sussex. She read Spanish and Latin American Studies at Edinburgh University, which included a year in Madrid. In the early 1990s she lived in Brazil and Edinburgh and then Buenos Aires, and in 1996 she won the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize for a piece about her time in Buenos Aires. Her first book, Bad Times in Buenos Aires, although not a conventional travel book, was shortlisted for the 1999 Thomas Cook Award. She is married and lives in London where she works as a journalist.

From Publishers Weekly:

Perhaps it is fitting that all is not what it appears to be in this travel ode to Spain and its best-loved fictional character, Don Quixote, the titular subject of Cervantes's 1605 novel. At first, France (Bad Times in Buenos Aires) seems poised to write about the continuing importance of Quixote in modern-day Spain. However, when the author sets up a return to Madrid after living there as a student in 1987, a time comparison looms large. Both themes crash in a very shaky beginning. When establishing her story, France repeats details that might be considered lurid (the brothel across the street, the junkies in the doorway) and forsakes essentials: Who is she and why is she so taken with Don Quixote and Spain? France drops hints, but they are wholly unsatisfying (e.g., "My university studies demanded that I spend a year in Spain and I had chosen the capital, where I knew no one"). "Things seemed not to have changed much in the intervening years," she writes, without revealing how many years had intervened. Two years? Twelve years? The first clue comes three pages later, in this ungainly sentence: "The house was a wreck when we lived in it, and ten years on it had become more desperate." France doesn't hit her stride until chapter six; from there on out, both style and substance shine. France reflects on a few highlights of Spain's political and social history; she cross-references these with various interpretations of Don Quixote. Spaced out over several chapters, France's overview of what is often cited as the world's first novel is excellent and functions equally well as a refresher or introduction. Throughout, France recalls life as a 20-year-old in Madrid amid a rich cast of characters, from her incredibly beautiful roommate, Carmen, to her lover, a Peruvian revolutionary. France's passion and curiosity for her subjects are contagious, and in the end she proves she is clearly up to the task.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: TRAFALGAR SQUARE +
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0297842773
• ISBN 13: 9780297842774
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 243