"Don Quixote," thought Vladimir Nabokov, is a work of monumental cruelty. After all, what really happens across its hundreds of pages except that a deluded old man endures an endless series of physical punishments and nasty pranks?
The Italian novelist Elsa Morante (1912-85) was quite clear about the influence of "Don Quixote" on her enormous 1948 debut, "Lies and Sorcery," which now appears in English in a deliciously ornate translation by Jenny McPhee.
Her novel is a savage spoof of those masterpieces, an enormous work of literary disenchantment.
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