Cervantes

The life of Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, has always posed a puzzle to scholars: a tantalizing patchwork of myth, fact, and conjecture. We know that he was a soldier and later a tax collector; that he was maimed in battle at Lepanto and held prisoner of war by the Turks; that he was thrown in jail, and later excommunicated; that he vanished from view for years at a time; and that at the age of 57, in 1605, he published the masterpiece that was both the first modern novel and the first b...