Is his madness debilitating, or is it illuminating? Is Don Quixote the one worthy of critique, or is it those around him? You can easily come to your own conclusion about anything with this book and find oceans of ink arguing with or against you. Don Quixote’s madness has been, and will continue toīe, one of the most contested character flaws out There. Characters, movements, emotions and befuddlements are all on display in this story, just as they are on display in our lives.Įven better, this book will become more fascinating the more that you think about it. The book will not make you mad, but it will leave an impression upon your brain. I want to say that this book will suck you in and never let you go, but that sounds too toxic this book is a friend that you will have for the rest of your life. It is not good in the “it will change your life” type of way (any book can be that type of book), but good in the sense that this book has 500 years worth of literary history attached to it, and you can sense it on every page.

This being said, there are some people out there who don’t know just how interesting this book is. Reviewing “Don Quixote” is a fool’s errand: I could sit up here and say it’s a classic and add absolutely nothing to the conversation, or I could stand on my soapbox and call it a piece of detritus, and people would just ignore me for obviously not doing the reading. For the sake of commentary, I think that all of these translations are unique in their own right, and I think they each deserve credit for their own merits.

If you want to have intellectual discussions, you should read either Edith Grossman’s or Burton Raffel’s translation. “Don Quixote” is a Spanish novel originally written by Miguel de Cervantes that traces the romantic and knightly adventures of a noble, Don Quixote de la Mancha, and his hired sidekick and squire who provides witty banter, Sancho Pancho. I’ve read three different translations of “Don Quixote”: Edith Grossman’s, Burton Raffel’s and John Rutherford’s. I thought it would be cool to pull as many versions of a single book out of my own personal rabbit hole as I could. One of the least productive questions you can ask someone who reads a lot is what their favorite book is-not because they won’t have a favorite book, but because it opens up a very deep rabbit hole where the book-lover will pull out book after book after book and never reach a conclusion about any of the books they pull out.

Don quixote grossman