What can be said about Miguel de Cervantes' greatest novel that has not already been said? "Don Quixote" is four hundred years old, and for almost all that time it has remained in the top ten greatest books of humanity. Furthermore, the Nobel Institute declared it the best work of fiction in the entire history of world literature.
Conceived as a parody of chivalric romances—the fantasy literature of its time—"Don Quixote" absorbed all the layers of Renaissance literature. Moorish tales, picaresque novels, Spanish romanceros, and poems of the Italian Renaissance—all found their reflection in this great work. In turn, Cervantes' masterpiece has had a colossal influence on the development of world literature and art; it is no coincidence that Vladimir Nabokov asserted that "while reading other novelists, we never for a moment really part from Don Quixote."
But most importantly, even after four hundred years, "Don Quixote" remains a devilishly engaging read!
In 1855, the prominent French illustrator Gustave Doré traveled to Spain, the homeland of the "glorious knight," in order to capture the local color and see the places he had made famous with his deeds. The cycle of illustrations created by the artist and published in 1863 continues to this day to serve as an adornment for new editions of Cervantes' novel in many languages of the world.
Translation: Yuri Korneev, Nikolai Lyubimov
Pages: 1120 (offset). Hardcover
Dimensions: 140x210 mm
Series: Foreign Literature. Big Books
