Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Don Quixote has spent so much time reading about knights and chivalry that he thinks he should be a knight errant himself. When he goes on these adventures with his loyal squire, Sancho Panza, they turn out in all kinds of wonderful ways. Unlike Don Quixote, who is often led astray by his fancy and thinks that the windmills he tilts at are giants, Sancho learns to be smart and clever. The wise fool and the sane madman travel the world together, and for almost 400 years, the combination of the two characters has made readers’ minds go crazy.

Miguel de Cervantes wrote the book Don Quixote, which is thought to be the first modern novel because of its experimental style and clever writing. John Rutherford did a masterful job translating the book for this Penguin Classics edition. This translation shows how lively and funny Cervantes’s writing is.