The Little Don Quixote

Easy-to-read retelling of the hilarious misadventures of Don Quixote, the idealistic knight, and his squire, Sancho Panza, who set out to right the wrongs of the world. Abridged version with six charming illustrations.

Obsessed with tales of gallant knights, Don Quixote, a middle-aged man from La Mancha, decides to take his own adventure. Donning rusty armor and riding upon an old horse, he sets off to change the world and save his invented damsel in distress in the name of chivalry. Unfortunately, Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza are met with a host of ill-intentioned characters, and the pair often find themselves the butt of a joke rather than chivalrous saviors. This renowned tragic comedy, written by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, was first published in Spain in two parts in 1605 and 1615. This is an unabridged version of John Ormsby's English translation from 1885.

How Don Quixote was knighted, his valiant battle with the windmills, and much more. English translations on facing pages of original Spanish text capture the flavor and romance of this literary masterpiece.

Read about the adventures of Don Quixote.

Since its publication in the early seventeenth century, Don Quixote has become a classic of world literature, and its hero a symbol of romantic aspiration and absurdity. Even today, Cervantess mad knight continues to reach out and hook readers psyches. Don Quixote is the story of a verisimilar literary character, whose rich and conflicted inner life and encounters with the world around him became the prototype for the modern novel from Tom Jones to Lolita. Johnson situates the Quixote within its relevant historical and cultural context, including the uniquely Spanish form of the general European dialectic of Old versus New. The mad heros encounters with the world expose the shaky foundations of that conflictive society. Don Quixote was a revolutionary ideological statement in its own time, and has proved to be a revolutionary literary statement for all time. Johnson shows how Cervantes challenges the official poetics of the late sixteenth century, and simultaneously anticipates virtually every aspect of the trendiest theorizing of the late twentieth century.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE Quichotte is a love story of profound tenderness and humanity from a great storyteller at his brilliant best. Wise, beautifully written, as heartbreaking as it is wildly comic, its characters unforgettable, its plot dazzlingly suspenseful, it illuminates our corrupt times where fact is so often indiscernible from fiction. Quichotte, an aging travelling salesman obsessed with TV, is on a quest for love. Unfortunately, his daily diet of reality TV, sitcoms, films and soaps has distorted his ability to separate fantasy from reality. He wishes an imaginary son, Sancho, into existence, while obsessively writing love letters to a celebrity he knows only through his screen. Together the two innocents set off across America in Quichotte's trusty Chevy Cruze to find her and convince her of his love. Quichotte's story is told by Sam DuChamp, a mediocre spy novelist in the midst of a midlife crisis, and as the stories of DuChamp and Quichotte intertwine, we are taken on a wild, picaresque journey through a familiar country on the edge of moral and spiritual collapse.

Don Quixote - as he calls himself - wants a life of adventure. He'd like to save damsels in distress and battle dragons. So he makes himself a knight and together with his great friend Sancho Panza, Don Quixote sets off in the world. But things don't go quite as planned and the two adventurersend up in all kinds of trouble.* Michael Harrison has written four teenage novels and has edited many highly-acclaimed poetry anthologies