NP 'Don Quixote' Crowned World's Best Work of Fiction

[Doug Millison]

'Don Quixote' Crowned World's Best Work of Fiction
Last Updated: May 07, 2002 05:17 AM ET


OSLO (Reuters) - "Don Quixote," the 17th-century Spanish tale about a
madcap knight, was voted the world's best work of fiction by a poll of the
world's leading authors on Tuesday.
Miguel de Cervantes' work eclipsed the plays of Shakespeare and
masterpieces by authors from Homer to Tolstoy in the survey of a galaxy of
100 authors unveiled at the Norwegian Nobel Institute.
Writers including Salman Rushdie, Milan Kundera, John le Carre, John
Irving, Nadine Gordimer, Carlos Fuentes and Norman Mailer gave "Don
Quixote" 50 percent more votes than the second-ranked work on the list of
100 novels, stories and plays.
Details of which works trailed Don Quixote were not immediately given. Each
author was asked to name what she or he considered the 10 "best and most
central works in world literature." Writers from more than 50 nations took
part.
Don Quixote, a satirical romance published in two parts in 1605 and 1615,
tells of an aging knight who wanders around La Mancha, central Spain, doing
hare-brained acts of chivalry to prove his love for Dulcinea del Toboso,
whom he has never met.
The poll was organized by editors of Norwegian Book Clubs as part of a
drive to promote classical literature against challenges from television,
videos and computer games.
It said that 10 authors had more than one book on the list -- Dostoyevsky
led with four, Kafka, Shakespeare and Tolstoy had three while Faulkner,
Flaubert and Garcia Marquez, Homer, Thomas Mann and Virginia Woolf had two.