Don Quixote (Vintage Classic Europeans Series)

The Vintage Classics Europeans series - with covers provided by textile design firm Wallace Sewell, these are must-have editions of European masterpieces, celebrating the warp and weft of a shared literary treasury.

TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH BY EDITH GROSSMAN

Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, and one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the adventures of a noble knight and his faithful squire as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain. Except the knight is not really a knight, his princesses are servant girls, his enchanted castles are inns and his giants are windmills. Don Quixote's goodness is real however, and his wish for the world to be full of adventures and passion is so profoundly human that, four hundred years after its first appearance, his story still crackles, beguiles and inspires.

'If there is one novel you should read before you die, it is Don Quixote' Ben Okri

“What a unique monument is this book! How its creative genius, critical, free, and human, soars above its age!”

This new translation of the Spanish classic is a marvel... It is impossible not to approve of this book in every respect...I find it impossible to imagine that a better novel will be published this year Don Quixote begins as a province, turns into Spain, and ends as a universe. . . . The true spell of Cervantes is that he is a natural magician in pure story-telling Cervantes is the founder of the Modern Era. The novelist need answer to no one but Cervantes. Don Quixote is practically unthinkable as a living being, and yet, in our memory, what character is more alive? Indisputably the definitive translation

Miguel de Cervantes was born on September 29, 1547, in Alcala de Henares, Spain. At twenty-three he enlisted in the Spanish militia and in 1571 fought against the Turks in the battle of Lepanto, where a gunshot wound permanently crippled his left hand. He spent four more years at sea and then another five as a slave after being captured by Barbary pirates. Ransomed by his family, he returned to Madrid but his disability hampered him; it was in debtor's prison that he began to write Don Quixote. Cervantes wrote many other works, including poems and plays, but he remains best known as the author of Don Quixote. He died on April 23, 1616.

Edith Grossman is the award-winning translator of major works by many of Latin America's most important writers. Born in Philadelphia, she attended the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California at Berkeley before receiving her PhD from New York University.

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