A hilarious account of the life of Don Quixote of La Mnach, whose head is in the clouds as opposed to Sancho Panzas grips with reality weave an astoundingly lively plot. A number of moral tales illustrating Spain’s story telling tradition of Chivalry and Knighthood make a foray too.
A whole New World opens up for Alonsa Quijano, when he loses his mind to books of knights and chivalry and one day wakes up imagining himself a Knight and plans to traverse the world on his horse duly christened Rosinante. The maiden whom he believes to be nobility too is a simple village peasant girl whom he calls Dulcina Del Toboso. When he actually sees three peasant girls he thinks one of them is Dulcina and is enraged that the evil forces have made her so ugly. Sancho his faithful friend finally names him the “Knight of Sad Countenance”
Being a spectator to Dons lively dueling with the windmills whom he mistakes for giants, or his speeches to the cowherds about where the Knight in arms is superior to a man of Letters, Sancho Panza takes it all. When, finally a University student Carrasco takes it upon himself to mend Don Quixote’s eccentricity. Amidst a lively rendering of events in Book two where Don fights with an imaginary Knight. The Knight of Mirrors, turns out to be none other than Samson Carrasco in disguise. Samson’s plan to get the Don back home to safety by beating him in a duel (while disguised as a rival knight-errant) fails when Don Quixote wins the battle.
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza then meet The Knight of Mirrors. Who is Carrasco in disguise again but this time Carrasco wins the battle. Dejected Don Quixote ends his long sojourn with Sancho Panza in tow, sinking into a long sleep and awakening to say he is Alonsa Quijano. The lucidity and flow of events transports the reader into fantasy land.