Don Quixote, Literary masterwork in Madrid, Spain.
Don Quixote is an adventure novel about a wealthy Spanish landowner who becomes obsessed with stories of chivalry and knights. He travels the countryside with his loyal companion Sancho Panza, encountering strange and often comic adventures along the way.
This work was published in two parts and marked a turning point in how the novel developed as a literary form. It emerged during an era when medieval traditions of knighthood had already faded from Spain, existing only in books and memory.
The character of Don Quixote reflects the gap between romantic ideals and everyday reality that existed in Spanish society. The book explores how people can become trapped in their own invented worlds and lose touch with what is real.
This book is quite long and can be read in sections without losing track of the story. Many readers find it helpful to start with a modern translation that preserves the wordplay and humor of the original.
In the second half of the book, the characters themselves become readers of the first half and discuss how their story was told. This early form of self-reference was revolutionary for literature at the time it was written.
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