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Monsignor Quixote
With his Sancho Panza a deposed Communist mayor and his faithful Rocinante an antiquated automobile, Monsignor Quixote roams through modern-day Spain in a brilliant picaresque fable that, like Cervantes' classic, offers enduring insights into our life and times.
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
5 people are currently reading
65 people want to read
About the author
Graham Greene
802 books6,129 followersHenry Graham Greene was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century.
Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. Through 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored the conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. The Power and the Glory won the 1941 Hawthornden Prize and The Heart of the Matter won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Best of the James Tait Black. Greene was awarded the 1968 Shakespeare Prize and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize. Several of his stories have been filmed, some more than once, and he collaborated with filmmaker Carol Reed on The Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949).
He converted to Catholicism in 1926 after meeting his future wife, Vivienne Dayrell-Browning. Later in life he took to calling himself a "Catholic agnostic". He died in 1991, aged 86, of leukemia, and was buried in Corseaux cemetery in Switzerland. William Golding called Greene "the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety".
Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. Through 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored the conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. The Power and the Glory won the 1941 Hawthornden Prize and The Heart of the Matter won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Best of the James Tait Black. Greene was awarded the 1968 Shakespeare Prize and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize. Several of his stories have been filmed, some more than once, and he collaborated with filmmaker Carol Reed on The Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949).
He converted to Catholicism in 1926 after meeting his future wife, Vivienne Dayrell-Browning. Later in life he took to calling himself a "Catholic agnostic". He died in 1991, aged 86, of leukemia, and was buried in Corseaux cemetery in Switzerland. William Golding called Greene "the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety".
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
December 20, 2018
Such a beautiful beautiful story.
****
There was a virtue in slowness which we had lost.
How can I pray to resist evil when I am not even tempted.
A little drunkennesshas brought us together, Sancho. It helps friendhip. Gluttony surely is a solitary vice. A form of onanism.
Wasn’t he [Abraham] prepared to kill his son? Oh, of course, there was a much worse scoundrel - the one you call God - He actually performed the ugly deed.
Doubt is human.
He didn’t want to be grateful - gratitude was like a handcuff which only the captor could release. He wanted to feel free, but he had the sense that somewhere on the road from El Toboso he had lost his freedom.
Why is it that the hate of man ... dies with his death, and yet love, the love which he had begun to feel for Father Quixote, seemed now to live and grow in spite of the final separation and the final silence - for how long, he wondered with a kind of fear, was it possible for that love of his to continue? And to what end?
****
There was a virtue in slowness which we had lost.
How can I pray to resist evil when I am not even tempted.
A little drunkennesshas brought us together, Sancho. It helps friendhip. Gluttony surely is a solitary vice. A form of onanism.
Wasn’t he [Abraham] prepared to kill his son? Oh, of course, there was a much worse scoundrel - the one you call God - He actually performed the ugly deed.
Doubt is human.
He didn’t want to be grateful - gratitude was like a handcuff which only the captor could release. He wanted to feel free, but he had the sense that somewhere on the road from El Toboso he had lost his freedom.
Why is it that the hate of man ... dies with his death, and yet love, the love which he had begun to feel for Father Quixote, seemed now to live and grow in spite of the final separation and the final silence - for how long, he wondered with a kind of fear, was it possible for that love of his to continue? And to what end?
November 12, 2008
The very first Graham Greene novel I ever read and still one of my favorites.
May 13, 2025
7.2/10
November 10, 2014
An well meaning and unexpected promotion sends the humble Monsignor Quixote on a collision course with his Bishop, and he takes leave and drives across Spain in his old car ‘Rocinate’ with his good friend the ex-mayor, his Sancho Panza. Greene cleverly plays in this, re-writing the Cervantes classic, but at the same time acknowledging it within the story, the referring to the original Quixote as the Monsignor’s ancestor throughout was a playful touch, particularly as it enrages the antagonistic Bishop.
As the Monsignor and the Communist ex-mayor road trip across Spain, protected almost in equal parts by Quixote’s innocence and naivety and the Panza’s more practical and worldly nous, they explore each other’s beliefs, gently probing and teasing, with the tacit understanding of the fundamental differences between their two ideologies. What draws them closer, apart from the endless supply of manchegan wine, is the doubts they both share in the infallibility of what they hold dear. Quixote suffers terribly, in the way that Greene’s protagonists seem to do, with his own inadequacies, both in the church, and in life, as his travels expand his horizons well beyond El Toboso. Later, when he aids the thief, it is almost with a bewildered, cheeky delight that he tells Sancho.
Despite the intimate conversations between the two friends, Monsignor Quixote is shot through with dry humour, the moment when Quixote discovers his steak is horsemeat is a brilliant example of the simple humour that Greene wields so effectively
He explained the situation in which he had found the bishop.
‘But the steak ..’ Teresa said.
‘What about the steak?’
‘You can’t give the Bishop horsemeat.’
‘My steak is horsemeat?’
‘It always has been. How can I give you beef with the money you allow me?’
There are still touching moments between Quixote and Sancho, as they grow their friendship by gently pushing back the boundaries of their faiths, until they have small patches of common ground, meanwhile the Bishop and Father Herrera lightly scheme in the background, impotently outraged at Quixote’s promotion to Monsignor.
Despite being hauled back to El Toboso, Quixote once again hits the road in Rocinate, with Sancho faithfully by his side, but his horizons are expanded too far, and the innate sense of what is right and just, and how the church should act and be treated is tested and he perhaps becomes the Monsignor he was all along.
As my Green collection grows I find I am loving the sheer readability of his novels, particularly the comedies, that produce genuine laugh’s, while at the same time containing poignant pictures of life. Yet, despite the surface simplicity, Greene always seem to paint a bright picture that delights and amuses.
(blog review here)
As the Monsignor and the Communist ex-mayor road trip across Spain, protected almost in equal parts by Quixote’s innocence and naivety and the Panza’s more practical and worldly nous, they explore each other’s beliefs, gently probing and teasing, with the tacit understanding of the fundamental differences between their two ideologies. What draws them closer, apart from the endless supply of manchegan wine, is the doubts they both share in the infallibility of what they hold dear. Quixote suffers terribly, in the way that Greene’s protagonists seem to do, with his own inadequacies, both in the church, and in life, as his travels expand his horizons well beyond El Toboso. Later, when he aids the thief, it is almost with a bewildered, cheeky delight that he tells Sancho.
Despite the intimate conversations between the two friends, Monsignor Quixote is shot through with dry humour, the moment when Quixote discovers his steak is horsemeat is a brilliant example of the simple humour that Greene wields so effectively
He explained the situation in which he had found the bishop.
‘But the steak ..’ Teresa said.
‘What about the steak?’
‘You can’t give the Bishop horsemeat.’
‘My steak is horsemeat?’
‘It always has been. How can I give you beef with the money you allow me?’
There are still touching moments between Quixote and Sancho, as they grow their friendship by gently pushing back the boundaries of their faiths, until they have small patches of common ground, meanwhile the Bishop and Father Herrera lightly scheme in the background, impotently outraged at Quixote’s promotion to Monsignor.
Despite being hauled back to El Toboso, Quixote once again hits the road in Rocinate, with Sancho faithfully by his side, but his horizons are expanded too far, and the innate sense of what is right and just, and how the church should act and be treated is tested and he perhaps becomes the Monsignor he was all along.
As my Green collection grows I find I am loving the sheer readability of his novels, particularly the comedies, that produce genuine laugh’s, while at the same time containing poignant pictures of life. Yet, despite the surface simplicity, Greene always seem to paint a bright picture that delights and amuses.
(blog review here)
February 17, 2019
As the title suggest a story based on M. Cervantes book.
A extremely honest and naive catholic priest and his friend, deposed city mayor with communist conviction, travel around Spain.
Place and time of action - Spain, around year 1980.
Timing is quite significant. In 1975 general Franco, autocratic ruler of Spain died and the country tried to move in democratic direction. The move was observed closely in Europe.
Now, 40 years later, very few people remember these events. Another point are changes in Catholic Church in early 1960 of which even less people are concerned now.
And one more - communism - ideas and political system almost forgotten.
As the result, quite substantial part of the book might be completely alien to many readers.
What remains? Humanly personality of main characters and few funny encounters. Not much.
A extremely honest and naive catholic priest and his friend, deposed city mayor with communist conviction, travel around Spain.
Place and time of action - Spain, around year 1980.
Timing is quite significant. In 1975 general Franco, autocratic ruler of Spain died and the country tried to move in democratic direction. The move was observed closely in Europe.
Now, 40 years later, very few people remember these events. Another point are changes in Catholic Church in early 1960 of which even less people are concerned now.
And one more - communism - ideas and political system almost forgotten.
As the result, quite substantial part of the book might be completely alien to many readers.
What remains? Humanly personality of main characters and few funny encounters. Not much.
March 12, 2025
One who reads GG should expect his progressive-agnostic Catholicism to be on every page, especially in books like this, where he dwells upon the life of a priest. And given the title, you might expect a familiar quixotic plot line.
What I didn't see coming is that GG would take a precious book by Giovanni Guareschi, published some 20 years earlier, and try to reenact it, making the priest the butt of the joke.
You will to better reading Dom Camillo's adventures than this feeble attempt of a communist come back.
What I didn't see coming is that GG would take a precious book by Giovanni Guareschi, published some 20 years earlier, and try to reenact it, making the priest the butt of the joke.
You will to better reading Dom Camillo's adventures than this feeble attempt of a communist come back.
April 18, 2008
So, this is my first Greene. I had been wanting to read something by him for quite a long time.
His simple, sober style makes it quite easy to get absorbed by the story. I had a really funny time with this book.
Greene splendidly managed to create a genuin story keeping essential parallels with the classic Don Quijote.
His simple, sober style makes it quite easy to get absorbed by the story. I had a really funny time with this book.
Greene splendidly managed to create a genuin story keeping essential parallels with the classic Don Quijote.
Want to read
November 11, 2008Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene (2006)
June 22, 2014
This wasn't a novel, it was a catch-up with an old friend I've never met before.
January 24, 2016
While the religious themes are a little too much to the fore, it is an engaging book.
January 15, 2018
A priest and a communist go on a roadtrip, and it's just as funny as I expected it to be. An overall very pleasant read, though I think I would've enjoyed it more if I was older and more religious.
December 20, 2024
‘Monsignor Quixote’ is a fine and mellow late novella, published in 1982, and is one of Greene’s most thought-provoking works, even as it pokes fun at all forms of intolerance, bigotry, self-importance, and more darkly, at the excesses of Communism and Fascism as well as the Church – or to be more precise, at the Curia which has succeeded in “destroying the Church.” But even more importantly, it is a study in temptation, doubt, ignorance, faith and a divine grace set against the forces of arrogance arising from money and the exercise of power over men.
When an angel of God (in the form of a Bishop from Matopo, in Africa somewhere) is helped by Father Quixote, the modest and kindly old priest of a small parish to a good, if very simple meal, a raw country wine, and a bit of cheese, when Father Quixote fills the Bishop’s car with the fuel it needed, and the Angel is sent on its way, its report is made to the proper authorities, and in due course, a letter arrives from Father Quixote’s own Bishop, to announce his promotion by Papal authority to the rank of Bishop – and thus a Monsignor, just like himself!
Now this Bishop’s strange dislike of Father Quixote springs from the fact that given his unusual name, the little priest actually believes he is a descendant of the great Don, unwilling to accept that a person called Quixote could be a figment of the imagination. He even names his battered old car Rozinante. So the news of Father Quixote's promotion sends the Bishop into a flurry of rage. He sends a pompous young seminarian priest to replace Father Quixote whom he orders to take a long holiday prior to his transfer.
And that is where the story really begins. Father, or rather, Monsignor Quixote sets off on his holiday. He is accompanied by Sancho (who else?), the deposed Communist Mayor, disgusted with the men who now rule the Party. In a manner reminiscent of the original Don Quixote, the two friends have the same experiences, all the while arguing for their respective party policy. The mischievous Sancho leads the innocent Monsignor to a brothel when they look for a night’s lodging. The Madam is quietly tipped off, the Monsignor is led into the non-business area, where he is, nevertheless tormented by nightmares and visions. Sancho takes him to see a blue film while they wait for Rozinante to rest a little at the local garagiste, who will also attend to a few minor repairs. Along the way they attract the attention of the awesome giants, the Guardia Civil, the equivalent of the Don’s windmills, “because the Guardia Civil revolve with every wind.” But the giants dog Father Quixote on his erratic drive, including when he saves a bank robber, or when he tries to save a statue of the Virgin from being auctioned.
It is not these adventures in themselves that make ‘Monsignor Quixote’ an unexpectedly moving novel. It is that after each new incident, Father Quixote realises with increasing perturbation that the innocence and humility that had so long defined his life were the marks of an unthinking complacency, and a blind, unquestioning obedience to an authority that might or might not have been what had been required of him. To have been a good priest, it was not enough to be humble. A priest should embody Faith. And faith is achieved only after a long, hard struggle with doubt and self-doubt. The whole of Greene’s book is held in two key passages:
“He had dreamt that Christ had been saved from the Cross by the legion of angels to which on an earlier occasion the Devil had told Him that He could appeal. So there was no final agony, no heavy stone which had to be rolled away, no discovery of an empty tomb. Father Quixote had watched on Golgotha as Christ stepped down from the Cross triumphant and acclaimed. The Roman soldiers, even the Centurion, had knelt in His honour, and the people of Jerusalem poured up the hill to worship Him. The Disciples clustered happily around. His mother smiled through her tears of joy. There was no ambiguity, no room for doubt, and no room for faith at all. The whole world knew with certainty that Christ was the Son of God. It was only a dream, of course it was only a dream, but none the less Father Quixote had felt on waking the chill of despair felt by a man who realises suddenly that he has taken up a profession which is of no use to anyone, who must continue to live in a kind of Saharan desert without doubt or faith, where everyone is certain that the same belief is true. Then he found himself whispering ,”God save me from such a belief.”
A little later, in a friendly argument with Sancho after the episode of the blue film:
“I have sometimes thought, may God forgive me,” Father Quixote said, “that I was specially favoured because I have never been troubled with sexual desires.”
“Not even in dreams?”
“No, not even in dreams.”
“You are a very lucky man.”
Am I? he questioned himself. Or am I the most unfortunate?
He couldn't say to the friend who sat beside him what he was thinking – the question he was asking himself. How can I pray to resist evil when I am not even tempted? There is no virtue in such a prayer… He prayed in his silence, “O God, make me human, let me feel temptation. Save me from my indifference.”
As the priest ponders over his lack of temptation, the consequent lack of doubt, and the culminating lack of faith which torments him now, a true humility descends on him; at the same moment, while trying to protect the statue of the Virgin from being auctioned, the money going to the Church (or even the pockets of the self serving priests who officiate there), he is hit on the head by a swinging censer at his great epiphany: he ceases to doubt, because at last he acts in faith. Sadly, that is also his last happy moment. The disorientation that is the result of the head injury offers the perfect excuse for his bullying Bishop to whisk him away to his own parish, where the Bishop and Father Herrera lock him up in his own room, declare him insane, and forbid him to say mass, even to himself in his own house. But Father Quixote has his own supporters, and Sancho and Teresa (a Dulcinea if ever there was one) sneak him out of his room to sit in his own parlour. In his final glory, Father Quixote says Mass one last time, a very special Mass - but there are no wafers, there is no wine, so that the beholders are not sure that there was a Mass. And the Communist ex-Mayor hesitates to accept Communion, but Father Quixote insists and yes, the Host is on his tongue, and the wine has a sweet mellow taste…
January 18, 2025
Monsignor Quixote (1982) is almost certainly less read than Greene’s novels Brighton Rock (1938), The Power and the Glory (1940), The Heart of the Matter (1948), The End of the Affair (1951), The Quiet American (1955), The Comedians (1966), and The Honorary Consul (1973). What I understand the works share is that they are complex works that focus on major religious, political, and ethical themes, with characters stripped back to the bare essentials sufficient for the reader to grasp the main themes of each novel.
Greene makes the connection between Catholicism and Communism playfully explicit in Monsignor Quixote. The Quixote figure is a Catholic priest in bad odour with his bishop; the Sancho figure is the
Communist mayor of El Toboso, who has just lost his seat in an election.
This is from a conversation between the two:
“Someone had painted a hammer and sickle crudely in red upon the crumbling stone. ‘I would have preferred a cross,’ Father Quixote said, ‘to eat under.’ ‘What does it matter? The taste of the cheese will not be affected by cross or hammer. Besides, is there much difference between the two? They are both protests against injustice.’”
Monsignor Quixote is a creative retelling of Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote. Father Quixote and the former mayor (Sancho) of a small Spanish town, El Toboso, go on a road trip and engage in verbal and philosophical ping-pong and encounter events that form the raw material for their discussions. Both are escaping the strangleholds on thought of an ideology – Catholicism and communism, respectively. While my book’s introduction by Henry Shukman emphasizes the key themes of self-doubt and friendship, the two characters seem to me to get on so well together because they are both escaping the straightjacket of ideologies that can be overwhelming, leaving little room for freedom of thought and action. Totalitarian ideologies can never provide all answers, so there must be space for individuals to exist outside them. Serious issues, but the book has humor and Greene succeeds is making us sympathetic to Monsignor Quixote – the reader is on his side and this glues us to the novel throughout. I enjoyed reading this.
Greene makes the connection between Catholicism and Communism playfully explicit in Monsignor Quixote. The Quixote figure is a Catholic priest in bad odour with his bishop; the Sancho figure is the
Communist mayor of El Toboso, who has just lost his seat in an election.
This is from a conversation between the two:
“Someone had painted a hammer and sickle crudely in red upon the crumbling stone. ‘I would have preferred a cross,’ Father Quixote said, ‘to eat under.’ ‘What does it matter? The taste of the cheese will not be affected by cross or hammer. Besides, is there much difference between the two? They are both protests against injustice.’”
Monsignor Quixote is a creative retelling of Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote. Father Quixote and the former mayor (Sancho) of a small Spanish town, El Toboso, go on a road trip and engage in verbal and philosophical ping-pong and encounter events that form the raw material for their discussions. Both are escaping the strangleholds on thought of an ideology – Catholicism and communism, respectively. While my book’s introduction by Henry Shukman emphasizes the key themes of self-doubt and friendship, the two characters seem to me to get on so well together because they are both escaping the straightjacket of ideologies that can be overwhelming, leaving little room for freedom of thought and action. Totalitarian ideologies can never provide all answers, so there must be space for individuals to exist outside them. Serious issues, but the book has humor and Greene succeeds is making us sympathetic to Monsignor Quixote – the reader is on his side and this glues us to the novel throughout. I enjoyed reading this.
May 4, 2021
Consisting largely of Quixote and his Sancho Panza (Communist ex-Mayor of El Toboso) getting into amusing situations and debating the relative merits of Catholicism and Communism, this is an entertaining and short humurous novel which manages to contain some nice points about faith, doubt and friendship. Even when Greene is operating in a minor mode he's still brilliant in my opinion.
December 8, 2016
An analysis of belief and - I feel - a record of a person's inner conversation. This could be very dry stuff indeed but, because it is Graham Greene writing, it manages to be easy to read, perceptive and funny. This man could engage you even when describing one of his dreams.
February 20, 2025
Wonderful. The story of two men of faith, one a priest the other a communist politician. Journeying and discovering the depth of their friendship and the complexities of human connection. Coupled with Greene's superbly crafted prose. Wonderful
March 31, 2013
Excellent story debating the nature of belief.
Want to read
February 29, 2016I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
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