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Don Quixote de la Mancha Audiobook
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(3.00) - 64,615 listener ratings
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Publisher Description
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.
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"Hilarious and Tragic. I had put off reading Don Quijote for a long time, but I'm glad I did. I can now fully appreciate Cervantes's humor and message. Loved it."
— Ryan (5 out of 5 stars)
Quotes
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“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
Don Quixote de la Mancha Listener Reviews
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" A couple of years ago I decided I would try to read a big classic novel every year. I got 35 or so chapters in and got so tired of waiting for something different to happen and for the story to move on that I gave up. A lot of Don Quixote mistaking things for other things and getting beat up. "
— Ariana, 11/16/2013 -
" Part two of this book was such a task. It has taken me months to finish. Part one was a joy and I'd give part one only 5 stars. It is generally a good book, full of humour. I'd recommend it to anyone who loves humorous books and has the patience to read part two of Don Quixote. But at the end of it all, I almost shed a tear for the valiant knight errants death. "
— Tatuu, 7/20/2013 -
" now i can say i read this classic book "
— carol, 7/12/2013 -
" It was really funny and very clever when I could pay attention. It was just so hard to pay attention! "
— Tammy, 11/20/2012 -
" Loved it, most favorite book. Review to follow. "
— Shaun, 7/23/2012 -
" Understanding Don was hard for me when I read this years ago...hard to find the humor in his mental breakdown "
— Ben, 4/18/2012 -
" I just couldn't get through it, but this may have been the fault of the translation (Ormsby) than anything else. I will try again with a more recent translation. "
— Dan, 3/3/2012 -
" One of my absolute favorites! "
— Kim, 12/28/2011 -
" Had to read this in English AND Spanish. WINDMILLS!! (shake of fist) "
— Tamara, 5/11/2011 -
" I have bought this book and tried to read it. Then put it down then tried again. I've never been able to finish it. About half way through I'm tired of it. Maybe someday. . . "
— Carla, 10/20/2010 -
" Probably a pillar on which the universe is built. Loved nearly every minute of it. Every chapter is better than the last. "
— Jeff, 4/11/2009 -
" Searching for beauty, purity, good "
— Roberta, 3/9/2008 -
" Really good book! I enjoyed it very much :) "
— Sdf456, 1/16/2008 -
" This was not as good as I expected it to be. "
— Rebecca, 2/2/2006 -
" The first half of this book was hilariously funny and ingenious, but it is much too long and the humor becomes rather repetitive after awhile. "
— Linda, 9/27/2005 -
" Great imagination! I identify with this character because I also imagine often a different world to live in ;) "
— Ana, 1/9/2005
About Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547–1616), novelist, playwright, and poet, was born in Spain of an ancient but impoverished family. After studying in Madrid, he became a soldier and was wounded in battle. He was taken by pirates in 1575, put in prison at Algiers, and was ransomed five years later. He spent the remainder of his life struggling to earn a livelihood from literature and humble government employment. His first attempt at fiction was a pastoral novel, La Galatea (1585), which was followed by his masterpiece, The Adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605).
About Simon Vance
Simon Vance (a.k.a. Robert Whitfield) is an award-winning actor and narrator. He has earned more than fifty Earphones Awards and won the prestigious Audie Award for best narration thirteen times. He was named Booklist’s very first Voice of Choice in 2008 and has been named an AudioFile Golden Voice as well as an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009. He has narrated more than eight hundred audiobooks over almost thirty years, beginning when he was a radio newsreader for the BBC in London. He is also an actor who has appeared on both stage and television.