Edith Grossman's translation brings Cervantes' seventeenth-century masterpiece to contemporary English readers with prose that balances faithfulness to the original with natural flow. The novel follows Alonso Quixano, a Spanish gentleman who reads so many chivalric romances that he loses his sanity and comes to believe he is a knight-errant named Don Quixote. Accompanied by his practical-minded squire Sancho Panza, he rides across Spain seeking adventure, mistaking windmills for giants and inn-keepers for lords. Cervantes created the modern novel through this story of a man who cannot distinguish fiction from reality, layering narratives within narratives and commenting on his own storytelling. The comedy of Don Quixote's delusions gradually deepens into meditation on the relationship between idealism and reality, imagination and action. Grossman, a celebrated translator of Latin American literature, captures both the humor and the philosophical weight of Cervantes' vision. Her introduction helps readers unfamiliar with seventeenth-century Spain understand references and conventions. The translation has been praised for making the novel accessible without simplifying its complexity. For readers approaching this foundational work of Western literature for the first time, or returning to it after encountering older translations, Grossman provides a version that reads as a living novel rather than a historical artifact.