The first part of Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote was published in Madrid, Spain. Often described as the first modern novel, it used competing narrators, self-conscious fiction and parody to examine the boundary between books and reality. Its second part followed in 1615.

Cervantes transformed prose fiction while satirising the romances that had shaped his protagonist's imagination. Don Quixote influenced poets and novelists worldwide, and its tension between idealism and reality became a durable literary archetype.