Don Quixote
Edith Grossman's definitive English translation of the Spanish masterpiece, a landmark work of early modern literature, in an expanded P.S. edition
Widely regarded as one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, this classic of Spanish literature, Don Quixote, chronicles the adventures of the self-created knight-errant Don Quixote of La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain in this brilliant example of picaresque satire. You haven't experienced Don Quixote in English until you've read this masterful translation.
This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
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Community Reviews
R
Besides everything else that everyone’s already said (ex. that it is one of the funniest books ever), Don Quijote feels like the quintessential novel for reasons beyond its place in literature history. It was an amazing discovery for my literary education to see just how much this “first modern novel” manages to capture the very essence of the medium. Literature’s ability to slide between different points of view stands apart from other narrative mediums like film in just how deep we are able to dig into the characters’ thoughts. You could argue that music can do the same, but that medium is too reliant on rhythm and time working in conjunction with the voice (no criticism here, to be clear), whereas literature freezes the voice in time so that the voice becomes the singular driving force of the proceedings. Poetry can and has done this too, but such dynamic yet precise shifting of points of view has mostly been relegated to the novel.
All that said, this is why it actually made sense for me that we so consistently deviate from Quijote and Sancho’s lives and into the inner worlds of so many seemingly trivial characters. I’ve seen people criticize the book for this, maybe understandably so, but there’s something about the way in which it perfectly captures the experience of immersing yourself into another person. As a massive nerd, I have a long record of drowning myself in fiction even if it means sidelining my responsibilities or relationships, and it’s not always easy to justify it. So you can see why I resonated with the story of a man who, after reading much fiction, abandons all his responsibilities and relationships and embarks on a journey for outmoded glory. But when I consider just how much the books, the games, the movies, and the music that I’ve consumed have shaped me into the person that I am, how they’ve expanded my ego boundary and made me cherish the mere existence of the other, you can see why I resonated with Quijote finding in his journey not so much glory as he does empathy, altruism, a meaning in putting everything on the line for a romantically disillusioned country girl. As Quijote gets lost in the other, we do too. The choices are sometimes rash and cause more harm than good, but the conviction leaves us with shards of virtue that we would hardly trade off. Not so long ago, I read a research paper that found a correlation between reading fiction and a sense of empathy, and it didn’t really surprise me because therein will always lie the power of fiction, and few novels capture that as well as Don Quijote.
All that said, this is why it actually made sense for me that we so consistently deviate from Quijote and Sancho’s lives and into the inner worlds of so many seemingly trivial characters. I’ve seen people criticize the book for this, maybe understandably so, but there’s something about the way in which it perfectly captures the experience of immersing yourself into another person. As a massive nerd, I have a long record of drowning myself in fiction even if it means sidelining my responsibilities or relationships, and it’s not always easy to justify it. So you can see why I resonated with the story of a man who, after reading much fiction, abandons all his responsibilities and relationships and embarks on a journey for outmoded glory. But when I consider just how much the books, the games, the movies, and the music that I’ve consumed have shaped me into the person that I am, how they’ve expanded my ego boundary and made me cherish the mere existence of the other, you can see why I resonated with Quijote finding in his journey not so much glory as he does empathy, altruism, a meaning in putting everything on the line for a romantically disillusioned country girl. As Quijote gets lost in the other, we do too. The choices are sometimes rash and cause more harm than good, but the conviction leaves us with shards of virtue that we would hardly trade off. Not so long ago, I read a research paper that found a correlation between reading fiction and a sense of empathy, and it didn’t really surprise me because therein will always lie the power of fiction, and few novels capture that as well as Don Quijote.
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