Adventure · Humor
Don Quixote
An old gentleman reads too many books about knights, puts on armor and rides out to fight giants that look like windmills.
Five levels, about 80 languages
- A2ElementaryShort sentences and everyday words.
- B1IntermediateYou follow clear stories about familiar things.
- B2Upper intermediateLonger sentences, richer vocabulary.
- C1AdvancedClose to the original, lightly condensed.
- C2ProficientThe complete novel.
One purchase is one book, in one language, at one level: $4.99. Another level of a book you own is $1.99. Editions nobody has asked for yet are written on request: chapter 1 in a few minutes, the rest while you read. How the levels work.
About the book
A knight from La Mancha
In a village in La Mancha lives a lean gentleman of nearly fifty who has read so many books about knights that, as Cervantes puts it, his brain has dried up, and he decides to become a knight-errant. He puts on his great-grandfather’s rusty armor, renames his bony old horse Rocinante, chooses a farm girl from a nearby village as his lady, Dulcinea del Toboso, and calls himself Don Quixote. On his second outing he takes a squire, Sancho Panza, a short, practical, talkative farmer promised an island to govern. Miguel de Cervantes published the first part in 1605 and the second in 1615.
Why it works for learners
The book is episodic: each adventure (the windmills, the flock of sheep he takes for an army, the barber’s basin he believes is a famous helmet) is a short, self-contained comedy. The humor comes from a simple, endlessly varied situation: a man who sees the world through books and a squire who sees it as it is. Their conversations are the heart of the novel, and Sancho’s steady stream of proverbs makes him a living lesson in idiom. Tap one of his sayings and the card explains the whole expression.
For learners of Spanish, it’s the cornerstone of the language’s literature, and Lexo’s Spanish is neutral, reading naturally in Spain and Latin America.
Which level to start at
B1 is a good start: the adventures are clear and the comedy comes through. B2 restores more of the conversations and the stories told along the road. The complete novel is very long; C1 keeps Cervantes’s voice while condensing, and C2 is everything.
Read next
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Twain’s assault on chivalry
- The Story of King Arthur and His Knights, the kind of story Don Quixote read too much of
- The Three Musketeers, honor and swordplay, played straight