Overview
An aging gentleman, driven mad by chivalric romances, sets off as a knight-errant with his squire Sancho Panza to right wrongs and defend the helpless.
Cervantes published Part I of Don Quixote in 1605 and Part II in 1615, separated by a decade during which he produced little else. The novel, about an aging Spanish gentleman driven mad by chivalric romances who sets off as a knight-errant, is often described as the first modern novel. Cervantes wrote much of it from poverty, having spent years as a soldier, prisoner, and minor tax collector.
Key Ideas
Idealism Versus Reality
Is it nobler to see the world as it is or as it could be?
The Power of Stories
The stories we consume shape our perception of reality.
The Dignity of Madness
There is something admirable in refusing to accept a cynical world.
Who should read this
Readers willing to commit to a 900-page novel that founded much of the Western novelistic tradition. Don Quixote is funny — genuinely, often laugh-aloud funny — and its structural innovations (unreliable narrators, self-aware fiction, a sequel that addresses its own unauthorised sequel) are centuries ahead of their time.
Who might skip it
Skip if you want a book you can finish in a weekend; Don Quixote rewards slow reading across months. Skip also if you've tried it before and bounced off; it is a book that many readers abandon at the 200-page mark, and there's no shame in not finishing.
The verdict
A book I've read in sections rather than straight through, and have been rewarded every time. The Edith Grossman translation (2003) is the one I'd recommend first — her preface, by Harold Bloom, frames the book well. Don Quixote and Sancho are two of the most deeply drawn characters in fiction; their friendship is the book's emotional centre.
"Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!"
— Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
If you liked this
Exemplary Novels by Cervantes for his shorter fiction. Tristram Shandy by Sterne for the eighteenth-century descendant.