Don Quixote (/ˌdɒn kiːˈhoʊtiː/, Spanish: ['doŋ ki'xote] ( listen)), fully titled The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha (Spanish: El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha), is a novel written by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes. Published in two volumes a decade apart (in 1605 and 1615), Don Quixote is the most influential work of literature from the Spanish Golden Age in the Spanish literary canon. As a founding work of modern Western literature, and one of the earliest canonical novels, it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published. In one such list, Don Quixote was cited as the "best literary work ever written".
Cervantes tells the story of the adventures of Don Quixote by way of a fictional Moorish chronicler named Cide Hamete Benengeli.
The protagonist of the book is Alonso Quixano (or Quijano), a retired country gentleman nearing 50 years of age, who lives in an unnamed section of La Mancha with his niece and a housekeeper. He has become obsessed with books of chivalry, and believes their every word to be true, despite the fact that many of the events in them are clearly impossible. Quixano eventually appears to other people to have lost his mind due to lack of sleep and food from dedicating all of his time to reading.
