Cervantes ended Don Quixote (1605) by promising a second part, but did not publish it until 1615. Meanwhile, a writer calling himself Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda obliged impatient readers with his own continuation. Cervantes faced this dilemma with ingenuity, bringing Avellaneda’s book into the world of his own novel, where Don Quixote and Sancho Panza discover that both authors have written books about them. Through their attempts to disentangle these layers of fiction, and his own claim that he was only editing a work written and translated by others, Cervantes explored the concepts of literature and reality, sanity and madness.

Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda (pseudonym), Segundo tomo del ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. En Tarragona: en casa de Felipe Roberto, 1614. C2 .F363s