Make sure you read this Edith Grossman version, which is vastly superior to the others.

We are Quixote

Our fantasies have collided with reality (but for us repeatedly with different fantasies), and like Quixote, our life vitality has been destroyed. Are we at the end of the novel, when we realize our lives have been a big delusion (or were they? wasn't Quixote's delusion actually his vitality?).

Now we think more responsibly (death creeps softly) and it is really hard for us to know what, if anything, gives us lasting vitality now.

Our vitality came at one time or another from sports, superheroes, fantasy novels, spirituality, romantic love, nature, nuclei of friends and parties, adrenaline sport, the gym, travel, movies, music, food and drink, solo bike rides in the hills,readings that fortify principles (but seem to actually alienate us further from the all-too-common living dead surrounding us who pretend to be alive by sucking the life out of those with the smallest diginity (or vitality) left). Our life has been a series of quixotic deaths when our jousting with reality knocks us off our fantastically absurd skinny horses, and we fear this is the last straw.

Don't get us wrong, we don't want to make a responsible choice. We need to do what we want most, not what the crisis dictates, but a slow burning vitality that will give us the staying power necessary to follow through. We don't want anybody to tell us what we should do, weighing positives and negatives, responsibilities and irresponsibilities, but tell us in your opinion, you who have known us longest, who isn't a complete sell-out yet, when you see us as most alive, when we most come out of our stupor.

Tell us comrade, without thinking too hard. Our perception is foggy at best, colluding with anti-vital forces. We are legitimately lost.

We realize it is only your opinion, but we value your opinion. Tell us, TELL US!! When do you see us as most alive? Because we fear we may actually already be dead...

The first modern novel. No modern novel can claim independence from what was started here. Hilarious,dark, profound and adventurous.

A warning though: the length. Not intended for high-schoolers. Tragically, many a poor secondary school student in Spain has had it forced on them too early and develop an aversion to the book for their entire lives! Something similar to many in the Western world with Shakespeare.

It is however, certainly the most important book ever written in Spain and one of the most important pieces of art in world history. I must emphasize the length, long sentences and paragraphs (sometimes pages!) are only for folk who enjoy working hard to discover the complex yet deeply funny and disturbing truths of human nature revealed here. This is not for the Harry Potter, Twilight types.

If you can handle it and like satire, this book may just blow you away.