Don Quixote
Don Quixote بقلم Cervantes ... Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading chivalric romances that he determines to become a knight-errant himself. In the company of his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, his 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. The book has been enormously influential on a host of writers, from Fielding and Sterne to Flaubert, Dickens, Melville, and Faulkner, who reread it once a year, "just as some people read the Bible."
Author
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Cervantes
One of the greatest Spanish writers, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was born on 29 September 1547. La Galatea, his first major work, was published in 1585. A pastoral romance, it received little success. He wrote several plays to make money, but all of them were a failure. Between 1590 and 1612, Cervantes wrote a series of twelve novellas Novelas ejemplares (Exemplary Novels). The collection was published in 1613 in Madrid. The first volume of Don Quixote appeared in January 1605. Fully titled The history of the valorous and wittie Knight-Errant Don-Quixote of the Mancha, it is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential works in the Spanish literary canon. In 1614, his poem Viage del Parnaso (Journey to Parnassus) was published. Two years later, in the April of 1616, Cervantes breathed his last. Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda (The Works of Persiles and Sigismunda), his last work, was published posthumously in 1617. Don Quixote has been an inspiration for various art creations, paintings, music and theatre. It continues to remain one of his most popular works..