Don Quixote, Part One

A country gentleman of La Mancha reads so many tales of chivalry that he loses his wits, names himself Don Quixote, and rides out on his bony horse Rocinante to right the world's wrongs in honour of a lady, Dulcinea, who is really a farm girl. With his practical squire Sancho Panza he charges windmills he takes for giants, takes inns for castles and flocks of sheep for armies, and is beaten and mocked again and again, while the stories of the people he meets are woven into his own. This is the complete first part.

Cervantes published the first part in 1605, playfully claiming that his story was translated from an Arabic manuscript by a Moorish historian, Cide Hamete Benengeli, found in the market of Toledo; it is often called the first modern novel. This is John Ormsby's translation, read by seventeen LibriVox volunteers in about twenty-one hours.