An ageing hidalgo, his grip on reality loosened by too many chivalric romances, declares himself a knight-errant and rides out into a world that no longer has any use for knights. From this simple comic premise Cervantes drew one of the turning points of Western literature. The first volume of "The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha" was printed in Madrid in 1605 at the press of Juan de la Cuesta; the second followed in 1615.

What made the book revolutionary was its method rather than its plot. Into a literature peopled by idealised heroes, Cervantes introduced ordinary, contradictory, self-questioning human beings. The narrative is built in layers, presented as a translation of a manuscript by a fictional Arab historian, Cide Hamete Benengeli; this play between author, narrator and character anticipates the techniques of the novel for the next four centuries. In the second volume the characters have read the first — among the earliest instances of fiction reflecting on itself.

The contrast between Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza — imagination against reality, idealism against pragmatism — proved so durable that it entered language as a concept. The work was a success across Europe from the moment it appeared and is today among the most translated literary texts in the world. For many critics and novelists, this is where the novel as a form truly begins.