Read a story/novel / travel ogue/ biography etc in English and write the summary of it mentioning the writers name and the name of the book in about 150 words.
Answers
Answer:
The knight in the mirror
Don Quixote - the first modern novel
Explanation:
The opening of Cervantes' entrancing tale of a gentle knight and his servant, Sancho Panza
Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing. An occasional stew, beef more often than lamb, hash most nights, eggs and abstinence on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, sometimes squab as a treat on Sundays - these consumed three-fourths of his income.
The rest went for a light woollen tunic and velvet breeches and hose of the same material for feast days, while weekdays were honoured with dun-coloured coarse cloth. He had a housekeeper past 40, a niece not yet 20, and a man-of-all-work who did everything from saddling the horse to pruning the trees. Our gentleman was approximately 50 years old; his complexion was weathered, his flesh scrawny, his face gaunt, and he was a very early riser and a great lover of the hunt. Some claim that his family name was Quixada, or Quexada, for there is a certain amount of disagreement among the authors who write of this matter, although reliable conjecture seems to indicate that his name was Quexana. But this does not matter very much to our story; in its telling there is absolutely no deviation from the truth.
... this aforementioned gentleman spent his times of leisure - which meant most of the year - reading books of chivalry with so much devotion and enthusiasm that he forgot almost completely about the hunt and even about the administration of his estate; and in his rash curiosity and folly he went so far as to sell acres of arable land in order to buy books of chivalry to read, and he brought as many of them as he could into his house...
His fantasy filled with everything he had read in his books, enchantments as well as combats, battles, challenges, wounds, courtings, loves, torments, and other impossible foolishness, and he became so convinced in his imagination of the truth of all the countless grandiloquent and false inventions he read that for him no history in the world was truer.
Translated by Edith Grossman