Miguel de Cervantes's masterpiece, El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha (1605), has long been considered the first modern European novel. In commemoration of the four hundredth anniversary of the publication of part 1 of Don Quijote (the novel was completed with the publication of a second part in 1614), Spanish author Antonio Munoz Molina prepared the following comments on the novel. Munoz Molina presented his remarks at the New York Public Library on April 16, 2005, during a program billed as "Don Quixote at 400: A Tribute/' which took place in conjunction with the first pen World Voices /New York Festival of International Literature. Other writers on the