Don Quixote: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Don Quixote, credited to Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. (Translated by John Ormsby.) Read in English by Peter Dann. It is a curious paradox that while the two volumes of Don Quixote have been described as the "best novel of all time" and the "best and most central work in world literature", the many episodes that make up the plot of this long work often prove to remarkably silly or sentimental, and occasionally lapse into riotous slapstick. But then, how liberating — for much of the fun of reading or listening to Don Quixote lies in discovering just how near we are in spirit to the audience who first enjoyed this novel in the early years of the seventeenth century. The novel's plot centres on a minor nobleman who, having read as literally true a great many books on knight-errantry, decides that he, too, must become a knight-errant seeking adventures, and who recruits as his squire a local labourer called Sancho Panza. The two set off, and many an "adventure" do they share indeed — though how many of these "adventures" amount to exercises in true knight-errantry, the reader will have to decide. The two volumes of this novel were originally published in 1605 and 1615. The translation is by John Ormsby. - Summary by Peter Dann

Recording facts

• Recording title: Don Quixote
• Author credits: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 130
• Listed recording duration: 39:02:59

Catalogue topics

• romances
• picaresque literature
• spain -- social life and customs -- 16th century -- fiction
• knights and knighthood -- spain -- fiction

Opening tracks: first 24 of 130

1. 001 - V1: Some commendatory verses — 11:18
2. 002 - V1: The author's preface — 16:05
3. 003 - V1: Chapter 1 — 12:07
4. 004 - V1: Chapter 2 — 13:49
5. 005 - V1: Chapter 3 — 14:11
6. 006 - V1: Chapter 4 — 14:29
7. 007 - V1: Chapter 5 — 9:36
8. 008 - V1: Chapter 6 — 15:10
9. 009 - V1: Chapter 7 — 11:13
10. 010 - V1: Chapter 8 — 17:59
11. 011 - V1: Chapter 9 — 12:09
12. 012 - V1: Chapter 10 — 11:58
13. 013 - V1: Chapter 11 — 15:35
14. 014 - V1: Chapter 12 — 13:47
15. 015 - V1: Chapter 13 — 21:23
16. 016 - V1: Chapter 14 — 19:02
17. 017 - V1: Chapter 15 — 16:51
18. 018 - V1: Chapter 16 — 17:05
19. 019 - V1: Chapter 17 — 18:51
20. 020 - V1: Chapter 18 — 23:05
21. 021 - V1: Chapter 19 — 16:49
22. 022 - V1: Chapter 20 — 28:58
23. 023 - V1: Chapter 21 — 25:34
24. 024 - V1: Chapter 22 — 23:34

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.