Don Quixote

Description

The first great novel - and perhaps still the most influential - Don Quixote contains within it all the seeds of modern fiction. A fantastic compound of reality and illusion in which the besotted Don Quixote and his down-to-earth companion, the faithful Sancho Panza, set out to right the world's wrongs in knightly combat, the narrative moves from philosophical speculation to broad comedy, taking in pastoral, farce and fantasy on the way. Between the Don's dreams of chivalry which inaugurate the novel, and his death which concludes it, Cervantes explores a range of experience and feeling worthy of his great contemporary, Shakespeare.

Miguel De Cervantes (Author) Miguel de Cervantes was born on September 29, 1547, in Alcala de Henares, Spain. At twenty-three he enlisted in the Spanish militia and in 1571 fought against the Turks in the battle of Lepanto, where a gunshot wound permanently crippled his left hand. He spent four more years at sea and then another five as a slave after being captured by Barbary pirates. Ransomed by his family, he returned to Madrid but his disability hampered him; it was in debtor's prison that he began to write Don Quixote. Cervantes wrote many other works, including poems and plays, but he remains best known as the author of Don Quixote. He died on April 23, 1616.