Author:Ford Madox Ford,David Shaw-Parker,Billy Howle,David Bradshaw

Brought to you by Penguin.
This Penguin Classic is performed by Billy Howle, known for his roles in Dunkirk, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and On Chesil Beach. This definitive recording includes an introduction by David Bradshaw.
The Dowells, a wealthy American couple, have been close friends with the Ashburnhams for years. Edward Ashburnham, a first-rate soldier, seems to be the perfect English gentleman, and Leonora his perfect wife, but beneath the surface their marriage seethes with unhappiness and deception. Our only window on the strange tangle of events surrounding Edward is provided by John Dowell, the husband he deceives. Gradually Dowell unfolds a devastating story, in which everyone's honesty is in doubt. This extraordinary novel of passion and betrayal is a masterpiece of narrative skill and emotional depth.
One of the greatest love stories in world literature
—— Vladimir NabokovTolstoy's historical and human sweep is breathtaking. His vision, humanity and his knowledge that love and pain are at the heart of life is the most important of all the profound truths revealed in this great novel
—— Jonathan DimblebyIn Anna Karenina, Tolstoy got totally inside the mind of a woman who is prepared to lose everything for the sake of man and who is so much in love that she commits suicide. I don't like her as a woman, but I think it is a brilliant portrait, unequalled in literature
—— Amanda Craig , IndependentI've read and re-read this novel and every time I find another layer in the story
—— Philippa GregoryI first read Anna Karenina 20 years ago when travelling across the Peruvian desert on a long bus journey, and it has stayed with me ever since
—— Hugh Thomson , IndependentAnyone who has read Anna Karenina will be aware of its extraordinary power as an epic psychological tale of a woman who gives up her husband and son for the sake of an affair with a handsome army officer. It has humour but, as with all of Tolstoy's works, it is completely without sentimentality
—— Mail on SundayI just love this classic romance about a married mother who succumbs to an unsuitable lover and becomes pregnant by him, which of course results in all sorts of pressures and heartache. The best love story ever told
—— Kay BurleyProbably one of the greatest novelistic treatments of the torments of love
—— Daily MailBlack Car Burning does what surprisingly few books even attempt: it gives a voice to the lyric landscapes of South Yorkshire, it looks beyond binary clichés to consider the real lives of real people in streets and suburbs that are often forgotten; Mort handles trauma, lust and loss so tenderly and deftly, it is hard to believe that this is a first novel
—— Andrew McMillan, author of PhysicalThis book is a symphony of voices: of lovers and the land they grasp in strong but scar-lined hands. Black Car Burning channels the soul of a city and its surrounds. Helen Mort shifts with deftness and empathy from the sensuous to the dark, communing with slandered neighbourhoods, the shadow of a disaster, and a generation's complex ascents through love. A hymn to a special city and an unforgettable book
—— Damian Le Bas, author of The Stopping PlacesA deeply internalised tale about love and yearning, trauma and loss, and springs from a place where the whispered thoughts of both people and places intersect in unsettling fashion
—— Helen Nugent , Northern Soul, *Books of the Year*Rushdie’s Booker-longlisted fourteenth novel is certainly the work of a frisky imagination... You can’t help being charmed by Rushdie’s largesse.
—— Guardian[Quichotte] is Don Quixote for our time, a smart satire of every aspect of the contemporary culture. Witty, profound, tender, this love story shows a fiction master at his brilliant best.
—— MillionsQuichotte overwhelms you from the first page with a lightning storm of ideas and a monsoon of exuberant prose… Quichotte has all the verbal pyrotechnics and outlandish invention that will be familiar to readers of Rushdie’s fourteen previous novels, but at the heart it is a serious and affecting tale about the irresistible pull of history… those who are prepared to sit back and enjoy the ride will encounter scenery like none they have ever seen.
—— Literary ReviewNothing but extraordinary... This incisively outlandish but lyrical meditation on intolerance, TV addiction, and the opioid crisis operates on multiple planes, with razor-sharp topicality and humor, delivering a reflective examination of the plight of marginalized personhood with veritable aplomb. Highly recommended.
—— Library Journal (starred review)Quichotte is a story of breathtaking intellectual scope... Like Cervantes, Rushdie is able to balance his commentary with a voice full of tragicomic fervor, which makes the novel a thrilling adventure on a sentence-by-sentence level and another triumph for Rushdie.
—— Bookpage (starred review)Rushdie’s rambunctious latest... [is an] uproarious comedy… a brilliant rendition of the cheesy, sleazy, scary pandemonium of life in modern times.
—— Publishers Weekly *starred review*A genre-hopping, cross-country picaresque which rips along with a great deal of wit, verve and empathy.
—— Dorian Lynskey , iNewsRushdie's dazzling and provocative improvisation on an essential classic has powerful resonance in this time of weaponized lies and denials.
—— Booklist *starred review*Hilarious by all accounts.
—— LitHubThis sardonic portrait of America combines exuberant humour with sober reflections on the toxic excesses of 21st-century media.
—— Max Davidson , Mail on SundayRushdie’s most personal novel for years… a truly imaginative response to his own experience of exile and dislocation.
—— Allan Massie , ScotsmanQuichotte is funny… beautiful, lucid prose.
—— Johanna Thomas-Corr , ObserverAbout a dozen pages into Quichotte, Salman Rushdie’s 14th novel, we read of an invention so devious, so outrageous, that it dispels any thought that the author’s imaginative powers might be waning… It’s a masterstroke in an uneven but diverting and occasionally brilliant novel… [and] a perfect fit for a moment of transcontinental derangement.
—— Christian Lorentzen , Financial TimesNow in his eighth decade, it is clear he [Rushdie] still possesses the linguistic energy, resourcefulness and sheer amplitude of a writer half his age – buoyant and life-enhancing qualities shared by his great Spanish predecessor [Cervantes]
—— Jude Cook , iRushdie’s novel is many things beyond just a Don Quixote retelling. It’s a satire on our contemporary fake-news, post-truth, Trumpian cultural moment, where the concept of reality itself is coming apart. It’s a sci-fi novel, a spy novel, a road trip novel, a work of magical realism. It’s a climate change parable, and an immigrant story in an era of anti-immigration feeling. It’s a love story that turns into a family drama... Characters, narratives and worlds collide and come apart in spectacular fashion, while Rushdie maintains an exhilarating control over it all.
—— IndependentA meditation on life, death and the stories told about both.
—— UK Press SyndicationThe fiction about fiction that takes the breath away… Quichotte expertly does it again.
—— Michael Wood , London Review of BooksFunny and touching and sad and oddly vulnerable, rather like its eponymous hero… [Quichotte is] compelling.
—— Lucasta Miller , SpectatorRushdie is a master storyteller who weaves his fictions and characters into such agreeable tapestries.
—— Sarah Hayes , TabletThe novel's dazzling virtuosity and cascade of cultural references culminate in a final moving moment of hope
—— Jane Shilling , Daily Mail






