Sam Dušan, the author of spy novels, inspired by Cervantes’s immortal masterpiece, invents his own Don Quixote and names him Ismail Smile. This Quixote—or Kixote (as the Spanish hero’s name sounds in French, and likely even as it was pronounced in Cervantes’s own time)—turns in Rushdie (or Sam Dušan?) into a former sales manager at the American pharmaceutical company "Smile." And this Kixote is not at all absorbed in knightly romances—he’s a true TV fanatic, in love with the TV star Salma R. Trying to win the favor of his American Dulcinea, Ismail Smile sets off on a journey across America—not alone, of course, but with his imagined son Sancho.