Don Quixote

Don Quixote cover
Good Books rating 4.5

Technical:
  • ID: 40
  • Added: 2025-08-15
  • Updated: 2025-09-03
  • ISBN: 9781440673016
  • Publisher: Penguin
  • Published: 2003-02-25
  • Reviews: 6

Don Quixote has become so entranced reading tales of chivalry that he decides to turn knight errant himself. In the company of his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, these exploits blossom in all sorts of wonderful ways. While Quixote's fancy often leads him astray—he tilts at windmills, imagining them to be giants—Sancho acquires cunning and a certain sagacity. Sane madman and wise fool, they roam the world together-and together they have haunted readers' imaginations for nearly four hundred years. With its experimental form and literary playfulness, Don Quixote has been generally recognized as the first modern novel. This Penguin Classics edition, with its beautiful new cover design, includes John Rutherford's masterly translation, which does full justice to the energy and wit of Cervantes's prose, as well as a brilliant critical introduction by Roberto Gonzalez Echevarriá.

Reviews


Pull quotes
  • Don Quixote is just about the most pleasant book you will ever read.
  • Whether you roll on the floor or just grin, Don Quixote is just plain fun.
  • It's just plain fun.


Pull quotes
  • Don Quixote was not just a book; it was a revolutionary force, blending humor with tragedy, realism with fantasy, and satire with sincerity.
  • The novel openly acknowledges itself as a work of fiction, with characters discussing their own literary status.
  • Don Quixote is not a one-dimensional hero, but a deeply flawed and endearing protagonist whose perception of reality evolves.


Pull quotes
  • Cervantes plays with different layers of reality and fiction in extraordinary detail.
  • Don Quixote has been labeled as the first modern novel, and 400 years after its publication it still remains one of the greatest books ever written.
  • It’s one of the first examples of heteroglossia – the inclusion of multiple voices (narrator, characters, and so on), which is a key element for later novels.


Pull quotes
  • A timeless classic of Western literature.
  • Full of joy, mirth and relevance.
  • Iconic picaresque adventures.


Pull quotes
  • Spain's greatest work of literature.
  • How it relates to Barcelona.
  • An enduring literary importance.


Pull quotes
  • Should really be looked at as two separate novels.
  • The first is broadly split into two parts.
  • The first modern novel.