Miguel de Cervantes

Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quioxte de la Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through the sixteenth-century Spain. This modern library edition presents the acclaimed samuel Putnam translation of the epic tale, complete with notes, variant readings, and an introduction by the translator.

In 1605 the aging Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, who had known failure and grave injury as a solider, tax collector, poet, and playwright, published the first truly modern novel, "a story filled with thoughts that never occurred to anyone else." Don Quixote, the picaresque tale of a romantic gentleman unhinged by his immersion in tales of chivalry, was disdained by Cervantes's literary betters, but it delighted common readers--as it has continued to do for more than 300 years. At once poetic and colloquial, dryly comic and unaffectedly moving, profound and bracingly down to earth, Cervantes's masterpiece demands repeated readings because it is one of those rare books that not only engages but informs the heart.