Cervantes did something no one had done before: he wrote a novel about a man who loses himself in books so completely that he remakes reality to match his fantasies. Don Quixote, a middle-aged gentleman from La Mancha, reads so many chivalric romances that he decides to become a knight-errant himself. He polishes an ancient suit of armor, renames his dying horse Rocinante, and rides out into the Spanish countryside to battle giants (which are actually windmills) and rescue damsels (who want nothing to do with him). His long-suffering squire, Sancho Panza, trails behind, a farmer more fact than fiction, who grounds his master's delusions in practical reality even as he becomes increasingly invested in the impossible dream. Four centuries later, the novel endures because it captures something essential about being human: the need to believe in grand meanings, to act heroically, even when the world insists there is nothing to save. It is a comedy about madness, but also a tragedy about what happens when the stories we love become indistinguishable from the world we see. Anyone who has ever believed in something foolish will find themselves here.
