Don Quijote.
Miguel de Cervantes · Volume 1
The first twelve chapters of Don Quijote in Cervantes' own Spanish, gently modernised, with a literal English gloss beneath every line and chapter notes for A2–B1 learners.
248 pages · Paperback & Kindle · Beginner–intermediate
the celebrated opening line of the novel
The knight sets out.
Chapters 1–12 of Part One, the episodes that made the novel immortal.
Don Quijote is the book Spanish learners dream of reading and assume they never will. This volume makes the start of that journey genuinely possible: the first twelve chapters of Part One (the ingenious hidalgo, the knighting at the inn, the windmills) with the 1605 spelling gently updated and the classic narrative voice intact.
A plain, literal English translation sits beneath every line of the original structure, so you learn how Spanish is actually built instead of reading a smoothed-out rendering. Each segment closes with "About This Chapter" notes on the key vocabulary, the cultural context and the jokes a first-time reader shouldn't miss.
- 01The ingenious hidalgoA gentleman of La Mancha reads too many romances
- 02The knighting at the innAn innkeeper obliges the world's newest knight
- 03The windmillsThe celebrated windmill charge
- 04Marcela and GrisóstomoThe shepherdess who answers for herself
- 05"About This Chapter" notesVocabulary, culture and context after every segment
Why this edition.
The impossible book, possible
With the gloss beneath every line, the classic of Spanish literature becomes an A2–B1 read, without abridgement or simplification.
1605 voice, modern spelling
The spelling is gently updated for today's students while Cervantes' narrative voice and humour stay exactly where he put them.
See Spanish built line by line
The plain, literal gloss keeps the original structure, so you learn how Spanish actually works instead of reading a smoothed-out rendering.
A guided first read
The chapter notes flag the parody, the period detail and the vocabulary worth keeping, so you read like someone in on the joke.
The episodes everyone quotes
The ingenious hidalgo, the knighting at the inn, the charge at the windmills: the twelve chapters that made the novel immortal.
the complete first sentence of Don Quijote
The details.
- Series
- The Spanish Reader
- Language pair
- Spanish–English interlinear
- Format
- Paperback & Kindle
- Print length
- 248 pages
- Source text
- Don Quijote, Part One, chapters 1–12 (1605, modernised spelling)
- Level
- Beginner–intermediate (A2–B1)
- Published
- June 2026
- ASIN
- B0H4DQFKDJ
More from the press.
Every edition is glossed by hand, word by word, and printed on demand by Amazon.
Read Don Quijote with every word translated beneath the original.
Buy on Amazon