Don Quixote

by Miguel de Cervantes (Author), Edith Grossman (Translator)

• New

  Paperback
  2005

  $13.10

  WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HAROLD BLOOM. Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, and one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote de La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain. Unless you read Spanish, you've never read Don Quixote.

• Used

  Paperback
  2001

  $14.43

  Miguel de Cervantes's mock-epic masterwork, Don Quixote was voted the greatest book of all time by the Nobel Institute, and this Penguin Classics edition is translated with an introduction and notes by John Rutherford. Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading romances of chivalry that he determines to become a knight errant and pursue bold adventures, accompanied by his squire, the cunning Sancho Panza. As they roam the world together, the aging Quixote's fancy leads them wildly astray, tilting at windmills, fighting with friars, and distorting the rural Spanish landscape into a fantasy of impenetrable fortresses and wicked sorcerers. At the same time the relationship between the two men grows in fascinating subtlety. Often considered to be the first modern novel, Don Quixote is a wonderful burlesque of the popular literature its disordered protagonist is obsessed with. John Rutherford's landmark translation does full justice to the energy and wit of Cervantes' prose, and this edition of Don Quixote won the 2002 Premio Valle Inclan prize for translation. His introduction discusses the traditional works parodied in Don Quixote and issues of literary translation. Miguel de Cervantes Saaverda's (1547-1616) life was occupied with a struggle to earn a livelihood from literature and humble government employment. As well as Don Quixote , he wrote a number of plays and a collection of highly accomplished short stories, Exemplary Tales (1613). If you enjoyed Don Quixote , you might like Homer's Odyssey , also available in Penguin Classics . John Rutherford makes Don Quixote funny and readable ...His Quixote can be pompous, imposingly learned, secretly fearful, mad and touching . (Colin Burrow, The Times Literary Supplement ).

• Used

  Hardcover
  1991

  $19.99

  This classic tale of deed and honour, truth and madness, is retold for young readers.

• New

  Paperback
  1992

  $7.46

  Translated by P. A. Motteux With an Introduction and Notes by Stephen Boyd, University College, Cork Cervantes' tale of the deranged gentleman who turns knight-errant, tilts at windmills and battles with sheep in the service of the lady of his dreams, Dulcinea del Toboso, has fascinated generations of readers, and inspired other creative artists such as Flaubert, Picasso and Richard Strauss. The tall, thin knight and his short, fat squire, Sancho Panza, have found their way into films, cartoons and even computer games. Supposedly intended as a parody of the most popular escapist fiction of the day, the 'books of chivalry', this precursor of the modern novel broadened and deepened into a sophisticated, comic account of the contradictions of human nature. On his 'heroic' journey Don Quixote meets characters of every class and condition, from the prostitute Maritornes, who is commended for her Christian charity, to the Knight of the Green Coat, who seems to embody some of the constraints of virtue. Cervantes' greatest work can be enjoyed on many levels, all suffused with a subtle irony that reaches out to encompass the reader, and does not leave the author outside its circle. Peter Motteux's fine eighteenth-century translation, acknowledged as one of the best, brilliantly succeeds in communicating the spirit of the original Spanish.