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.

Cervante's Exemplary Stories resist facile classification. All the stories are exemplary in the literary sense, with their exquisite delineation of character, smooth flow of narrative and richness of dialogue. Yet they range from tales of adventure and amorous intrigue, like "The Little Gypsy Girl", where vice is tolerated with remarkable ease, to studies of low life, full of social and moral observation, like "A Dog's Colloquy". Published in 1613, the Exemplary Stories were the first of their kind in Spain. In this masterful translation, C.A. Jones manages to capture the fine balance between the colloquial and the majestic which characterizes the stories and makes them such a delight to read.

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.