Don Quixote is a masterpiece of world fiction, a brilliant satire on traditional romances and an uproarious comedy and a prose-epic in a new genre for its time. Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, and one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote de La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza. Don Quixote's mount is an old, bedraggled horse named Rocinante on which he travels through sixteenth-century Spain in search of adventure, dedicating his actions of valour to a simple country girl whom he calls Dulcinea, seeing her as his lady. He takes on spirits, evil enchanters and most famously, of course, giants in the form of windmills.