Cervantes' Don Quixote
Thursday 1 March 2007 21:45-22:30 (Radio 3)
Landmarks: Philip Dodd and guests discuss one of the great books of world literature, Cervantes's Don Quixote.
Playlist
In the latest in the Night Waves series discussing classic works of art in detail, Philip Dodd and guests tackle one of the greatest stories ever told - Don Quixote.
Over four hundred years old, this epic tale from Spain remains curiously familiar even to those who have never read it.
Most epic heroes are young, but Miguel De Cervantes settled on an older man to escape his home and set out on a series of bizarre and colourful adventures.
The chivalric Don Quixote travels with his earthy neighbour, the thin and the portly on a monumental quest for friendship and beauty and a series of dangerous conflicts, many of them fantastical.
Tonight's Night Waves, Landmarks explores the history and attraction of Cervantes' sprawling novel and examines its philosophy and its influences.
Is it, as Martin Amis has written, "an impregnable masterpiece that suffers from outright unreadability" or is it, as Dostoevsky once claimed "the saddest book ever written"?
Joining Philip Dodd in the Night Waves studio are the poet James Fenton, who is currently working on a theatre version of Don Quixote, Rodrigo Cacho, from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese in Cambridge and, down the line from New York, the translator of the highly acclaimed latest English language version of the book - Edith Grossman.
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes: A New Translation by Edith Grossman is published by Vintage
