DON QUIXOTE'S DELUSIONS: TRAVELS IN CASTILIAN SPAIN

by Miranda France

When in 1987 Miranda France spent a year living in Madrid, the post-dictatorship ebullience was at its height. Pornography and soft drugs were legalised alongside more basic freedoms, such as divorce, party-affiliation and kissing in the street. In 1998 she returned to make a journey through the great cities and towns of central Spain - Madrid, Toledo, Segovia, Salamanca and others. With the new prosperity, much has changed. But much has also endured, as she learns from the people she meets, who include a private detective, a shepherd, various nuns, two belly dancers and a Castilian separatist. She also discovers that Cervantes' DON QUIXOTE' published in 1605 and the most translated book after the Bible - is a work of genius which still helps to explain the Spanish today's Spaniards still suffer from Don Quixote's delusions, and are as stubborn, inflexible and unrealistic as they have always been.

Genres: Travel, Spain, Memoir, Nonfiction, Adult

Unbound

First published August 5, 2002

About the author

Miranda France is an award winning writer and translator. She has written two highly acclaimed travel books, Bad Times in Buenos Aires and Don Quixote's Delusions. France has won the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. She has translated Argentine writers including Alberto Manguel, Claudia Piñeiro and Liliana Heker. She grew up on a farm, not unlike the farm that is featured in her first novel, That Summer at Hill Farm, but now lives in London with her husband and two children.

Reviews

[Mathew Londono · Rating 4 out of 5]

a very charming mixture of personal anecdotes, don quixote snippets, and spanish history. france weaves multiple narratives and timelines so masterfully you won’t even notice the transitions, while also enhancing each individual section. there’s a distinct wittiness and humor in her observations of spanish life that makes you fall for both spain, DQ, and her group of counter culture friends. that being said, some stories feel unnecessary and don’t add much to the overall narrative. the introduction of a few characters and their conclusion also feels a bit too fast and impersonal given a lot of the close moments they spent together. overall, this book asked a great job at explaining the ‘quixotism’ of spanish society and has me itching to both visit spain and crack open a copy of don quijote

[Ashley Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Spain and it's an interesting way to read a book. I imagine this was someone's thesis, to be honest. Not awful but not a memoir I would recommend.

[Nandadevi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very few travel books, or tales of life in other cultures, can sustain themselves or the reader's interest based solely on the authors observations and reflections. To my mind - at least - a memorable book about 'foreign parts' is a story about a journey to (or from) something, be it a place or a thing or a hope or a memory, and the reader participates with both the author's outer and inner journeys. Twin journeys of the road, and of the soul, as it were.

So Miranda France's story of Spain and Don Quixote has the essential elements. She unfolds the story of Don Quixote as she unfolds the story of post Franco Spain, and that of her uncertain connection with a young man as committed to revolution as he is to avoiding a committed relationship.

The scholarship on Don Quixote and Cervantes is there, and told with enough enthusiasm as to tempt the reader to take up - or take up again - that golden brick of a book (though I'd still stick with the translator Cohen's advice to exercise 'judicious skipping'). As for Spain itself, this is as good an account as you'll find anywhere of the the explosion of political - and sexual - expression that followed the decades of Franco's total repression of what we'd called liberal society, and to some extent of the massive hangover that followed. And as for the author's journey of the heart? Well there's a lot left unsaid, but there's enough left in the text to allow the reader to suppose that this was not the end, but the beginning of something much, much better.

Highly recommended, if you have an interest in Don Quixote or Spain, or have some sympathy with a tale of being in love in foreign parts with a very difficult object of affection.

[David Kamioner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent! She is about as accurate as i have ever read on the Spanish character and on the history of the country. growing up Latin in South Florida, her characters resonated with me as my relatives and friends. and as much in my later years as i became a roaring anglophile, the pull of my blood has never abated. thus, a clever englishwoman who understands Latin males is rarity and a joy to read. well done Miranda!

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author writes well. A good mix of personal history, Cervantes, and travel in Spain. About half way through I began to think that I liked the book but not the author as she sounded a bit superior - but she won me over. And I really wonder now whether I have ever read Don Quixote If I did it was a long time ago and this has made me interested.

[Eva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mooie combinatie van reisverhalen uit Spanje en een analyse van het verhaal over Don Quijote.

[Donna Boultwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

I must read Don Quixote again it's been a while! Great mix of Spanish anecdotes and how to interpret DQ.