Don Quixote (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Author), John Rutherford (Editor, Translator), Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria (Introduction)

Book Description

Release date: February 25, 2003

Don Quixote has become so entranced reading tales of chivalry that he decides to turn knight errant himself. In the company of his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, these exploits blossom in all sorts of wonderful ways. While Quixote's fancy often leads him astray—he tilts at windmills, imagining them to be giants—Sancho acquires cunning and a certain sagacity. Sane madman and wise fool, they roam the world together-and together they have haunted readers' imaginations for nearly four hundred years.

With its experimental form and literary playfulness, Don Quixote has been generally recognized as the first modern novel. This Penguin Classics edition, with its beautiful new cover design, includes John Rutherford's masterly translation, which does full justice to the energy and wit of Cervantes's prose, as well as a brilliant critical introduction by Roberto Gonzalez Echevarriá.

@DonQuixote People say that sleep deprivation, isolation, and too much reading have made me loopy. But I say nay! Nay!!!

I am going full-creeper and giving a girl I love a special secret nickname without her even knowing about it.

I’ll call her Dulcinea. Get it? Like Dulce del Coochayyyy.

From Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The highest creation of genius has been achieved by Shakespeare and Cervantes, almost alone." —Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"A more profound and powerful work than this is not to be met with...The final and greatest utterance of the human mind." —Fyodor Dostoyevsky



"What a monument is this book! How its creative genius, critical, free, and human, soars above its age!" —Thomas Mann



"Don Quixote looms so wonderfully above the skyline of literature, a gaunt giant on a lean nag, that the book lives and will live through his sheer vitality....The parody has become a paragon." —Vladimir Nabokov

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About the Author

Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra was born in Spain in 1547 to a family once proud and influential but now fallen on hard times. His father, a poor barber-surgeon, wandered up and down Spain in search of work. Educated as a child by the Jesuits in Seville, the creator of Don Quixote grew up to follow the career of a professional soldier. He was wounded at Lepanto in 1571, captured by the Turks in 1575, imprisoned for five years, and was finally rescued by the Trinitarian friars in 1580. On his return to Spain he found his family more impoverished than ever before. Supporting his mother, two sisters, and an illegitimate daughter, he settled down to a literary career and had hopes of becoming a successful playwright, but just then the youthful Lope de Vega entered triumphantly to transform the Spanish theatre by his genius. Galatea, a pastoral romance, was published in 1585, the year of Cervantes’ marriage to Catalina de Palacios y Salazar Vozmediano. But it did not bring him an escape from poverty, and he was forced to become a roving commissary for the Spanish armada. This venture, which led to bankruptcy and jail, lasted for fifteen years. Although he never knew prosperity, Cervantes did gain a measure of fame during his lifetime, and Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were known all over the world. Part I of Don Quixote was published in 1605; in 1613, his Exemplary Novels appeared, and these picaresque tales of romantic adventure gained immediate popularity. Journey to Parnassas, a satirical review of his fellow Spanish poets, appeared in 1614, and Part II of Don Quixote in 1615 as well as Eight Plays and Eight Interludes. Miguel de Cervantes died on April 23, 1616, the same day as the death of Shakespeare--his English contemporary, his only peer.

Product Details

• Paperback: 1072 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (February 25, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142437239
• ISBN-13: 978-0142437230
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 1.9 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #20,802 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

81 of 89 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Modern Translation July 16, 2003

By JR Pinto

Format:Paperback

Everyone should read Don Quixote at least once. It is the first modern novel ever written. It is also one of the longest - although, I don't see how it could be any shorter. The novel is actually two novels stuck together. Cervantes published the first half, which became an incredible success. Years later, he published the second part which relates the third salley of the Don. The effect that this has on the book is that all the major characters in the Part II have all ready read Part I, making the book incredibly self-referential. Cervantes also has fun in mocking a spurious Part II by another author that was published at the time.

I do not speak Spanish - let alone 17th Century Castilian, so I was forced to read the novel in translation. I have never read another version, but John Rutherford's Penguin Classics version was satisfactory in every way. He does his best to retain Cervantes' humor, which is the most important aspect of the novel. Also, modern audiences my benefit from translation because it puts the book into the modern language - making a four-hundred-year-old book read fresh.

As for the plot, a country hidalgo named Alonzo Quixano spends his time reading chivalric romances. One day, he decides to become a knight errant named Don Quixote (Sir Thighpiece). He convinces a simple neighbor who speaks in proverbs, Sancho Panza, to come along with him to be his squire. Quixote is crazy and Sancho is a fool - except that they seem to be preternaturally sane and wise when the chips are down. If you are only familiar with Man of La Mancha, the book is drastically different. Dulcinae never actually makes an appearance. Sancho is traveling along because he has been promised the governorship of an island - and he gets it! They just spend the book wandering around and getting into adventures. Personally I prefer the second part of the novel (the first is too digressive).

Allow yourself some time, and enjoy this masterpiece of Western Literature.

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent. June 21, 2001

By R. E. P. Esq.

Format:Paperback

The phrase 'ahead of it's time' is such a cliche that I tend to avoid it all together. Unfortunately, when trying to describe Don Quixote, no better phrase comes to mind. Written in the 1500's, this book is perhaps the first modern comedy. In Don Quixote's squire, Sancho Panza, you'll find traits later used in the ingenius Dickens' character Samuel Weller (Pickwick Papers) some 300 years later. And the craft of the language used by the translator of this new edition, along with their reassuring preface, gives me the impression that very little was lost in this translation, or at least this translation loses the least of other translations.

This book, which is a little over 1000 pages (though heavily laden with appendixes) is a great read, and the only complaint I have is the clumsy handling of the translator's notes. There is a lot of Latin quoting in the book, along with references to other chivalric novels, and rather than simply supplying a foot note, they've decided to place all of these in the back of the book, which add a lot of page flipping and unnecessary interruptions to your reading if you want to know and understand everything that's happening. Hopefully in the next edition of this translation, they will correct this. I gave this book 5 stars because it's such an excellent book in itself excellently translated, that I decided it more than worthy of the rating, but if the lack of foot notes bothers you, you may want to disqualify it.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good New Translation of an Old Classic August 10, 2005

By Edward V. Killeen

Format:Paperback

DON QUIXOTE was written exactly 400 years ago. Therefore as you can imagine it has been reviewed countless times already. It is called Europe's first narrative novel. I can only comment on the present translation, which I consider excellent. It sticks to the original Spanish in the important ways, but is not slavish ... lots of "thee", "thou" and "thy" have been modernized without really affecting the gist or the flavor of the story.