Mario Grande’s Review of Don Bigote
The launch of Roy Lotz’s new book was held in The Secret Kingdoms bookshop. The book was reviewed by translator and writer, Mario Grande.
On the way to the presentation of Don Bigote by Roy Lotz I decided to go up calle Atocha, since at the height of number 87 was the printing house of Juan de la Cuesta, where the first edition of Don Quixote was printed in 1606. A way like any other of paying my respects and getting Cervantino, because I had been told Don Bigote was a parody of the adventures and misadventures of the icon of La Mancha. The presentation took place in “Secret Kingdoms”, Calle Moratín, crowded for the occasion. Only thanks to the good offices of the tandem of Ybernia, Maria and Enda, I managed to get a seat. I hadn't read the book yet and I was only guided by Lotz's answers to the audience's battery of questions to get my bearings.
A real page-turner
With the copy signed by the author I set off on my way back home on one of those crowded buses that cross the city going round and round. I was lucky again: I found a seat, which was not an easy thing on a Friday at 21.30 h. And that allowed me to start reading Don Bigote along the trip. What I found is a real page-turner.
After an introduction in the purest Cervantine style, Lotz breaks down into ten chapters much more than a parody. Accurate in the concise description of the characters, with allusive names (the antihero, a bigot reader of Ann Coulter or Spengler); Cervantino in moments such as the peculiar "cave of Montesinos” or the development of relations between don Bigote, sometimes haughty and judgmental, others close and grateful) skilled in the use of registers, archaizing Bigote, while colloquial that of Dan Chopin; prodigal in comic situations and resources to techniques of crime fiction, science fiction or dystopy; and, something very grateful in these times, agile and carefree in the dialogues that lighten whatever might overload the text with boring speechs on philosophy and social criticism. A novel well framed in this decade of (dis)information, where the scenario is the least of it, because the search for Don Bigote and his faithful companion Dan Chopin is, in the best sense of the word, universal.
A novel that makes you laugh and think.
Review Don Bigote
