Don Quixote

By: John Ormsby - translator, Miguel de Cervantes

Narrated by: Roy McMillan

Length: 36 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's summary

The most influential work of the entire Spanish literary canon and a founding work of modern Western literature, Don Quixote is also one of the greatest works ever written. Hugely entertaining but also moving at times, this episodic novel is built on the fantasy life of one Alonso Quixano, who lives with his niece and housekeeper in La Mancha. Quixano, obsessed by tales of knight errantry, renames himself "Don Quixote" and, with his faithful servant Sancho Panza, goes on a series of quests. Many of these adventures, including tilting at windmills, are established in European literary consciousness.

Originally published in two volumes a decade apart (in 1605 and 1615), Don Quixote has been brought to life in its entirety in this audiobook.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

Public Domain (P)2011 Naxos AudioBooks

Perfection

Would you consider the audio edition of Don Quixote to be better than the print version?

I couldn't say, I haven't read the print version. But it will not be an easy read, that much is certain.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Don Quixote?

There were so many; Quixote on his deathbed almost brought tears to my eyes.

What about Roy McMillan’s performance did you like?

I came here to comment about his performance. "Pitch perfect" does not do justice to this performance. It was so good, never a word over emphasized, never a situation over dramatized. His narration did not get in the way of my interpretation of the text.

Great performance!!!

Thanks must go to the narrator of this. I’m sure I would never have gotten thru this story as it IS very long. The humor is timeless and opened my eyes to all that have blatantly quoted (stolen) from it. The narrator brought it all out to perfection. Well done!

Very glad I finally read this story

Well read, great story. It's sometimes difficult to appreciate the mind of great writers in centuries past. But Cervantes, writing over 400 years ago, shows us that genius is always contemporary.

A Masterpiece

Love this novel. It is a masterwork of storytelling. Some of the language and stories may be outdated for modern audiences, and the length is a challenge. But so many of the episodes are so much fun and a lot of the philosophical questions will probably remain timeless.
The narration is superb.

Fantastic

A book of philosophy and ridiculousness. More truth than one would believe and more BS than can almost be palleted.

More than funny

I didn't know much of anything about this book. If I had listened to it by itself, my take on it would probably be that it is funny, but way too long, and not much more. I enjoyed it much more than that because I decided to listen to a Yale course online (which is free) as I listened to the book. Each lesson gives the professor's take on the chapters assigned. I highly recommend this for those who aren't already very familiar with the book and its significance. You can google the audio course if you're interested, search Cervantes' Don Quixote with Professor Roberto González Echevarría.

Now That It's Over I Miss This Book

Long ago in my undergrad days I blew by Don Quixote in a survey course. To a mind not very attuned to thick books and partial to any explanation that would make the test easier, believing that Cervantes had penned nothing more than a multi-volume diatribe against those iniquitous chivalric romances was a cinch.

Such an oversimplification served my purposes: first, to identify Cervantes’ proper place on the flowchart of “Those Who Have Contributed to the Creation of the Modern Novel”. Second: to get a passing grade, graduate and get a job and a place of my own.

Over the years, however, I’ve often wondered how any writer, no matter how gifted, could stretch such an indictment over some 900-some-odd pages and still manage to achieve a work that would be reverenced and relished for 400 years. When Audible put Don Quixote on sale in February of 2011, I decided to see—or rather, hear—what Cervantes had really written.

Before I did, however, I decided to immerse myself in the romances that were supposedly Cervantes’ target. I read all of Chretien de Troyes. I read Beroul. And Gotfried von Straussburg’s, Wolfram von Eschenbach and Hartmann von Aue.

I discovered works that were a joy to read. Works that captivated the imagination, that even played with and parodied the very genre they were establishing. So far from finding dusty books worthy of contempt, I found vivid invention and vigorous writing. And in the first dozen minutes of Don Quixote I discovered I had been reading the wrong romances.

Cervantes’ target seems to be the later romances written just before his time, chiefly the Amadis of Gaul and Orlando Furioso. I’ve never read Amadis, but years ago I did get Orlando under my belt and enjoyed the hell out of it. I began to wonder if the whole indictment of chivalric romances was just a device to tell a great story.

No matter what his motivation, we should all be glad he did set pen to paper. I rank Don Quixote with Tom Jones and Pickwick Papers as the three of books I’d choose if cast upon a desert island (not that that’s likely to ever happen). It never ceases to delight. And now that’s it’s over I miss it terribly. Seriously. Most of the credit goes to Cervantes, but the reader Roy McMillan deserves his share as well. His easy tone, light manner and perfect diction make him the ideal travelling companion for this ride.

Oddly enough, the book gives the same kind of pleasure as those romances it lampoons. In this guided tour of life in early 17th Century Spain, you never know what’s going to happen around the next corner. Is the stranger at the inn a villain or a saint? Is the shepherd singing on the hillside a man or a woman? Is the fantastic story they tell true or false? Is the popularity of the first volume of the book, which we find recorded in the second, a tweak at the reading public who consume such improbable works as Amadis of Gaul so avidly?

And of course there’s the ultimate, overarching question that seems to hold the book together: is Don Quixote mad or sane?

Though the book ends with a vigorous diatribe against chivalric romances, the hero (or anti-hero, if you go that way) could not be more sympathetic and likeable. When not smashing puppet shows or liberating condemned cutthroats he is full of good sense and rounded phrases. His “achievements” (battling with windmills and wineskins, for example) make him famous throughout Spain and indeed Europe—not because they are real achievements, of course, but because the book that records those deeds gives such delight.

Maybe that’s why Don Quixote deserves its central place in the “Who-Created-the-Modern-Novel” flow chart: because Cervantes shows us that real life, our ordinary existence, can be as enchanted and improbable as any romance.

Classic story, wonderfully read, perhaps too long.

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

This is one of literature's classic works, ushering in a new era of literature. Roy McMillan reads it excellently, rendering many of the regional Spanish dialects into an appropriate analogue from the British Isles: the goat herders have a Welsh accent, for example.

I took advice from one of the other Audible reviews, and listened in conjunction with Yale University's literature course by Professor González Echevarría, who places the book into the important context of the contemporary literary styles it references and parodies.

The two 'volumes' were published ten years apart, and are therefore quite distinct in style. The first volume in particular has rather too many side-stories irrelevant to the main plot. For this reason, an abridged version might be preferable.

Long but Entertaining Story

Would you consider the audio edition of Don Quixote to be better than the print version?

No, the story was read superbly. The subtle changes in narrators intonation for each of the characters in the book made it very easy to follow who was talking at all times.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No, this is a long story and, although very entertaining, not always fast paced.

Classic Cervantes

It is no wonder that this book remained a classic through the century's. Find out what makes our misguided hero so quixotic. Yes, that word originates from the main character of this book. Don Quixote's faithful sidekick Sancho Panza will keep you entertained with his wise words and plentiful proverbs.