Don Quixote is often described as the first modern example of the novel.
Miguel de Cervantes’s work appeared in two parts, in 1605 and 1615, and is widely regarded as a founding work of Western literature. Its long prose narrative follows Alonso Quijano, who becomes the self-styled knight Don Quixote, and his squire Sancho Panza.
The label reflects more than the book’s length. Cervantes combines adventure, satire, social observation, embedded stories, shifting viewpoints, and sustained attention to the inner lives of characters. Don Quixote’s imagination repeatedly collides with ordinary reality, creating a form more psychologically and structurally flexible than the older chivalric romances it parodies.
“First modern novel” is a critical description rather than an uncontested birth certificate for the genre. Earlier prose works, including Rabelais’s Pantagruel, are also proposed as milestones. Even so, Don Quixote is the answer most literary histories and quizmasters expect.