Alonso Quixano, a middle-aged gentleman from La Mancha, reads so many books about knights and chivalry that he loses touch with reality. In the first volume, he reinvents himself as Don Quixote de la Mancha, sets out to become a knight-errant, and selects Dulcinea (a farm girl) as his imaginary lady. His steed is the weary Rocinante. He strives to right wrongs, but his adventures, like tilting at windmills he imagines to be giants and mistaking inns for enchanted castles, highlight the disconnect between fantasy and the real world. Quixote enlists the practical peasant Sancho Panza as his devoted squire. Their episodic journey across Spain is full of comic mishaps and philosophical questions about truth, imagination, and the nature of heroism.