If Shakespeare’s greatest characters quake to their very core with the realization of what they cannot see, or lose their reason altogether when they finally grasp how little they understood, Cervantes crafted an entirely new way of writing around his characters’ limitations and the incompatibility of their different perceptions of the world.

His novel contribution to fiction derives from a fascination with how characters perceive and misperceive situations.

His novel contribution to fiction derives from a fascination with how characters perceive and misperceive situations.