Vol. 5, Issue 2, Part B (2023)

The focus of the present paper is three dimensional. In the beginning, it critically establishes the foregrounded textual features in the well-known novels of Salman Rushdie which projects him as a unique postmodern fiction writer so far. Then, attention shifts to the in-depth analysis of Quichotte which is a 2019 novel by him written getting motivated by Miguel de Cervantes’ classic novel Don Quixote, and it tells the story of an addled Indian American man who travels across America in pursuit of a celebrity television host with whom he has become preoccupied. The protagonist, Sam Du Champ, who is an Indian-born writer living in America and author of a number of unsuccessful spy thrillers writes a book as an bizarre attempt creating the character of Ismail Smile. Then, through a postmodern analysis of the contexts, conventions, intertextuality, language features, metalanguage, modes, and readerly perspective of the narrative, it examines how the narrative discourse addresses the reader; incorporates a story within a story; uses various techniques that emphasize the story’s status as a fictional enterprise keeping the reader more engaged; departs from conventional ideas in terms of the form and function of a narrative; and makes the reader draw his or her own conclusions; and thus challenges the assumptions as a metafiction.