One of the earliest novels ever written, Don Quixote tells the story of an imaginative nobleman, Alonso Quixano. Quixano reads so many romances that he begins to believe that he is a knight, fated to restore chivalry and justice to the world. Quixano changes his name to Don Quixote de la Mancha and recruits Sancho Panza, a simple farmer grounded in reality, as his squire. The two set out to live the knightly story he has so often imagined.
Don Quixote is a foundational work for the western canon, with direct references in classic works such as Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and many more famous novels.