Don Quixote
Written by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Narrated by Zacharias Prewett
3/5
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About this audiobook
The plot revolves around the adventures of a noble (hidalgo) from La Mancha named Alonso Quixano, who reads so many chivalric romances that he loses his mind and decides to become a knight-errant (caballero andante) to revive chivalry and serve his nation, under the name Don Quixote de la Mancha. He recruits a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, as his squire, who often employs a unique, earthy wit in dealing with Don Quixote's rhetorical monologues on knighthood, already considered old-fashioned at the time. Don Quixote, in the first part of the book, does not see the world for what it is and prefers to imagine that he is living out a knightly story.
The book had a major influence on the literary community, as evidenced by direct references in Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers (1844), Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac (1897), as well as the word quixotic and the epithet Lothario; the latter refers to a character in El curioso impertinente (The Impertinently Curious Man), an intercalated story that appears in Part One, chapters 33–35. The 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer cited Don Quixote as one of the four greatest novels ever written, along with Tristram Shandy, La Nouvelle Héloïse, and Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.
When first published, Don Quixote was usually interpreted as a comic novel. After the French Revolution, it was better known for its central ethic that individuals can be right while society is quite wrong and seen as disenchanting. In the 19th century, it was seen as a social commentary, but no one could easily tell whose side Cervantes was on. Many critics came to view the work as a tragedy in which Don Quixote's idealism and nobility are viewed by the post-chivalric world as insane, and are defeated and rendered useless by common reality. By the 20th century, the novel had come to occupy a canonical space as one of the foundations of modern literature.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
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.
More audiobooks from Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra
Exemplary Novels Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don Quixote Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Don Quixote, Vol. 1 (Unabridged) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don Quixote The Original Manuscript Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for Don Quixote
10 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Reader is very, very distracting. I love this book but couldn’t take his reading.
3 people found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5terrible reader... I recommend the versions by Naxos or Recorded Books. I haven't listened to the Penguin Books version more than a few minutes; it's also better than this version.
2 people found this helpful