Don Quijote, by Miguel de Cervantes, trans. Burton Baffel (Norton, £12.95 in UK)

Don Quijote has been translated many times into English, probably the best version being Smollett's, which was reissued about a decade ago. It loses a great deal in translation, since Cervantes's original Castilian is lively and colloquial, with a good deal of word play and frequent use of folk proverbs - in which Spanish is particularly rich. Burton Raffel's version strikes a fair balance between contemporary idiom and traditional English usage, with only very occasional Americanisms to mar the flow. The print is a little small, which is virtually inevitable if this long, episodic novel is to be fitted into a single manageable volume.