The 'best book ever' celebrates 400 years

Madrid - They say William Faulkner read it every year and former Spanish prime minister Felipe Gonzalez peruses it daily. One expert recommends you read it thrice before you die, while another envies those who haven't touched it - yet.

Don Quixote, the endearing tale of a mad, errant knight and his sidekick, Sancho Panza - described variously as the "universal novel" or the "bible of humanity" - celebrates its 400th birthday this week, kicking off a year-long party for one of the world's most acclaimed literary works.

"It's a book that means all things to all people," said literature professor Howard Mancing, of Purdue University in Indiana, US. "It's hard not to see yourself in Don Quixote and Sancho."

Middle-aged and unsuccessful, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra started Don Quixote in the late 1500s - some say during one of several spells in prison. The first of its two volumes came off the presses on December 20 1604 and went on sale on January 16 1605. Cervantes completed the second volume in 1615, a year before dying.

From day one it has been a best-seller. Four centuries on, it's still ranked as the most published and translated book after the Bible.

"I've read thousands of novels but I've never read anything that I've wanted to come back to the way I do this one," Mancing said.

With astonishing unanimity, writers and readers praise it the world over. In 2002, a panel of 100 leading authors from 54 countries chose Don Quixote as the best book ever - bagging 50% more votes than any other book.

In the original, Don Quixote spans 126 chapters and nearly 1 000 pages. Written in archaic although beautifully crafted Spanish, it demands considerable patience and concentration. Translations and modern language adaptations lighten the task, but even still, most people, Spaniards included, shy from it.

"Everyone has it on their bookshelves but not even a minority get through it," said Juan Victorio, medieval literature professor at Spain's National Open University.

Many are happy sticking to the greatly simplified and substantially doctored 1970s film version of the Broadway musical The Man of La Mancha.

Victorio maintains that "one needs be in a certain mental state... to have suffered at life's hands" before taking on Quixote.

A fusion of reality and fantasy, the plot covers the journeys and adventures of Don Quixote and his mule-straddling squire, Sancho Panza.

Alonso Quijano is an ordinary gentleman who, after soaking himself in the stories of knights errant - all the rage in the 16th century - decides to become one himself and, taking on the name of Don Quixote de La Mancha, he mounts his nag, Rocinante, and sallies forth from a nameless village in the heart of Spain to right wrongs and protect the oppressed.

He is obviously crazy. He mistakes inns for enchanted castles and their peasant girls for beautiful princesses. He confuses windmills with oppressive giants and dreams up Dulcinea, the beautiful damsel to whom he has pledged love and fidelity.

Sancho knows his master is off square but sticks by him. Both characters change and develop as they wind their way across Spain. In the end, Quixote senses the folly of his actions and returns home sadly to die.

"Its message is that you're either mad or you'll end up mad," Victorio said. "If you have goodness in your heart and want to help humanity, you have to pretend you're mad for them to pay you any attention."

Much about Cervantes remains a mystery. A man of no formal schooling, he was 58 when the book came out. His precise birthday and birthplace are unknown, as are the whereabouts of his remains.

His nomadic life was a tale of hardship that took him from the battle fields of Lepanto, where he crippled his left arm, to five years as a hostage in Algeria. He later roamed Spain as a tax collector and civil servant for the Spanish Armada, all the time trying to write plays, poems and novels. By 1605, he'd taken a good battering from life.

"What's most amazing about the novel is that despite its humour and playfulness and literary strength, it's really a novel about how people approach life and reality," said Edward Friedman, a Spanish professor and Cervantes expert.