Newly introduced by leading Quixote scholar Ilan Stavans, this 400th
Anniversary edition of Don Quixote of La Mancha--called the most
popular book in history after the Bible and the first modern
novel--inaugurates Restless Classics: interactive encounters with great
books and inspired teachers. Each Restless Classic is beautifully
designed with original artwork, a new introduction for the trade
audience, and a video teaching series and live online book club
discussions led by passionate experts.
Described as "the novel that invented modernity," Miguel de Cervantes's
Don Quixote of La Mancha has become since its publication in Spain in
two parts--the first in 1605, the second in 1615--a machine of meaning,
endlessly adapted into ballet, theater, dance, film, music, and
television, not to mention a veritable tourist industry.
Lionel Trilling argued that "all prose fiction is a variation on the
theme of Don Quixote." Mark Twain was a passionate fan. Flaubert
modeled Madame Bovary after it. Dostoyevsky reimagined its protagonist
in The Idiot. And Borges, in his story about Pierre Menard, looked at
it as the gravitational center of Hispanic civilization. Milan Kundera
fittingly summarized this unstoppable devotion when he said that
"Cervantes teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question."
Of course, Don Quixote has its detractors, too. Nabokov, for instance,
maintained it was one of the cruelest narratives ever. Still, after 400
years, the book remains with us, winding improbably through history like
the famous errant knight and his companion, Sancho Panza.
The commemorative Restless Classics edition, published on the
four-hundredth anniversary of its full release, features John Ormsby's
canonical English translation, illustrations by award-winning Mexican
artist Eko, and an insightful, thought-provoking introduction by Ilan
Stavans, one of the foremost public intellectuals today. Don Quixote,
Stavans writes, is "not only a novel but a manual of life. You'll find
in it anything you need, from lessons on how to speak and eat and love
to an exhortation of a disciplined, focused life, an argument against
censorship, and a call to make lasting friends, which, in Cervantes's
words, is 'what makes bearable our long journey from birth to death'."
The volume includes access to an interactive series of video lectures by
Stavans, available online at restlessbooks.com/quixote. The videos serve
as map to this restless classic, which speaks more eloquently than ever
to our perennial desire to sacrifice for a dream in order to see its
true worth.
