Miguel de Cervantes’s two-part novel (1605, 1615) about a Spanish gentleman who reads so many chivalric romances that he loses his mind and sets out to become a knight-errant — widely regarded as the first modern novel, a founding text of European literature, and an inexhaustible meditation on the relationship between imagination and reality.
A man reads so many books about knights and chivalry that he loses his mind and becomes a knight himself. He attacks windmills, mistakes inns for castles, and travels Spain with his down-to-earth squire Sancho Panza. This sounds like a simple satirical joke. It is one of the most profound books ever written.