Don Quixote: A Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes.

Product DescriptionDon Quixote is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes. It was published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615. A founding work of Western literature, it is often labeled the first modern novel and many authors consider it to be the best literary work ever written.The plot revolves around the adventures of a noble (hidalgo) from La Mancha named Alonso Quixano, who reads so many chivalric romances that he loses his mind and decides to become a knighterrant (caballero andante) to revive chivalry and serve his nation, under the name Don Quixote de la Mancha. He recruits a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, as his squire, who often employs a unique, earthy wit in dealing with Don Quixotes rhetorical monologues on knighthood, already considered oldfashioned at the time. Don Quixote, in the first part of the book, does not see the world for what it is and prefers to imagine that he is living out a knightly story.The book had a major influence on the literary community, as evidenced by direct references in Alexandre Dumas The Three Musketeers (1844), Mark Twains Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and Edmond Rostands Cyrano de Bergerac (1897), as well as the word quixotic and the epithet Lothario; the latter refers to a character in El curioso impertinente (The Impertinently Curious Man), an intercalated story that appears in Part One, chapters 3335. The 19thcentury German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer cited Don Quixote as one of the four greatest novels ever written.When first published, Don Quixote was usually interpreted as a comic novel. After the French Revolution, it was better known for its central ethic that individuals can be right while society is quite wrong and seen as disenchanting. In the 19th century, it was seen as a social commentary, but no one could easily tell whose side Cervantes was on. Many critics came to view the work as a tragedy in which Don Quixotes idealism and nobility are viewed by the postchivalric world as insane, and are defeated and rendered useless by common reality. By the 20th century, the novel had come to occupy a canonical space as one of the foundations of modern literature.ReviewDon Quixote is the worlds best book say the worlds top authors. The GuardianIf there is one novel you should read before you die, it is Don Quixote Ben OkriDon Quixote is a funny book. I mean laugh out loud funny. Sometimes at work I would unplug my iPod and read out a scene . . . It is funny ironic, funny slapstick, funny base, funny absurd. Drew GummersonSo the best thing to say up front, perhaps, is get hold of Don Quixote and make time for it. It will be worth the television sitcoms you skip, the thirty or so quiet evenings you spend on it . . . But the book quite staggered me with its charm, beauty, and profundity. Once you enter (or reenter) its expansive, ruminative, deeply nourishing world, the literary equivalent of eating slow food, its hard not to become a bit of a bore about how stupendous it is. Terry Castle, The AtlanticI practically did a dance when I read this. It was wonderful. So many different characters drifted through this book and I became attached to all of them. I felt like something had been taken away from me when I finished. 1001 Books you must read before you dieAlonso Quixada, a retired gentleman of La Mancha, his mind addled through overconsumption of chivalric romances, dons a homemade helmet and rusty armour, saddles up his hack Rocinante, recruits a squire in the person of Sancho Panza (a local labourer lured by the promise of his own island to govern) and sets out as a knighterrant to perform feats of bravery in honour of his (supposed) lady, Dulcinea. Adam Newey, The Guardian