Don Quixote
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$0.99/mo for 3 months + $20 Audible bonus voucher
Don Quixote
Buy Now for $34.82
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Narrated by:
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Simon Vance
With a wealth of fancy and an irrepressible high spirit, this beloved adventure story pokes fun at the exaggerated social and literary conventions of Cervantes’ day. Driven mad by reading too many chivalric romances, Don Quixote decks himself out in rusty armor and a cardboard helmet, determined to become a knight-errant and roam the world righting wrongs. He persuades the practical Sancho Panza to become his squire, and his inspiration on his quest is the peasant girl Aldonza, whom he idealizes as his queen of love and beauty, Dulcinea. From his first fighting encounter with a score of windmills to his climactic confrontation with a victorious enemy, Don Quixote’s feeble mind and heroic heart have earned him a place as one of the best-loved characters in fiction. A work consistently ranked among the greatest in all of literature, Don Quixote de la Mancha has inspired and influenced a host of notable writers over the past four centuries.
(P)1997 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Critic Reviews
“A more profound and powerful work than this is not to be met with...The final and greatest utterance of the human mind.”
(Fyodor Dostoevsky)“One of the best-loved novels of all time, Don Quixote was intended to be a satire on the exaggerated chivalric romances of Cervantes’ time. However, the author soars above this purpose in his wealth of fancy and in his irrepressible high spirit.”
(Masterpieces of World Literature)“Don Quixote is greater today than he was in Cervantes’ womb. [He] looms so wonderfully above the skyline of literature, a gaunt giant on a lean nag, that the book lives and will live through [his] sheer vitality…He stands for everything that is gentle, forlorn, pure, unselfish, and gallant. The parody has become a paragon.”
(Vladimir Nabokov)“Don Quixote is the first modern novel, perhaps the most eternal novel ever written and certainly the fountainhead of European and American fiction: here we have Gogol and Dostoevsky, Dickens and Nabokov, Borges and Bellow, Sterne and Diderot in their genetic nakedness, once more taking to the road with the gentleman and the squire, believing the world is what we read and discovering that the world reads us.”
(Carlos Fuentes)“What a monument is this book! How its creative genius, critical, free, and human, soars above its age!”
(Thomas Mann)“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?”
(Milan Kundera)“The highest creation of genius has been achieved by Shakespeare and Cervantes, almost alone.”
(Samuel Taylor Coleridge)“Don Quixote, famously, is the first major work of Western literature to take ordinary human life for its subject—specifically, a life that is replete with accidents, fiascoes, and indignities—and make it over into something luminous with meaning. It does so without pomp or sententiousness—it’s the friendliest and least formal of all the Great Books—yet will overwhelm you, in the end, with its moral and imaginative splendor.”
(Atlantic Monthly)Brilliant
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💯 #1 BEST book of all classics I've experienced!
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Importantly, the tale feels humble and believable. While Don Quixote might perceive windmills as giants, wine as the blood of his enemies, and flocks of sheep as rival armies; the reader can always discern the explicable reality that its protagonist cannot – nothing ever truly happens that is too outlandish. At its best, this contrast prompts a reader to reflect on how their own imaginations can transform the mundane into the extraordinary.
While we might laugh at Don Quixote, we can also recognise that he perceives himself to be triumphant and heroic in his own world, and (largely) happy in ours; we therefore come to root for him. While the whole cast is consistently (and successfully) played for laughs, all characters are layered and ultimately endearing. Amidst the whimsical chaos and delusions of grandeur, there are real poignant moments of wisdom and sobriety within Don Quixote, which hit all the harder when they arise from characters we might at first dismiss.
Some may find the story repetitive and bloated, but I consider it to be an episodic tale that explores the full breadth of its premise, with recurring motifs to comfort the reader and drive its themes home. By its end, I felt familiar with the characters and world, but satisfied.
For a story so old as it is, it is surprisingly meta. Those meta elements shine light on a range of matters, from the Spanish inquisition, to intellectual property and plagiarism, to the veracity of legend. It also provides pertinent commentary on love, gender, and religious tolerance, which remain relevant today.
A new favourite. Highly recommend.
An ode to imagination and the spirit of adventure
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Brilliant narration.
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An epic journey
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