Life Of Miguel De Cervantes

This is the story of my death and life, in which fiction and that lesser truth, history, from time to time form a seamless whole. Speaking is the hero of Stephen Marlowe's brilliant new novel. He is Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra: son of a barber-surgeon (always on the run from the bill collector), grandson of a converso(a Jew who chose Christianity over the flames of the Spanish Inquisition), adorer of his own sister (who may not have been his sister after all), brother of one of the most famous spies in recorded history (though the records have mysteriously vanished), prisoner in an Algerian dungeon (following capture by Barbary Pirates), friend to a Faustian eunuch astrologer named Cide Hamete Benegeli (whose missing private parts are miraculously regenerating), and, of course, creator of the most celebrated of all fictional historical novels--The Adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

The first biography to be aimed at the general reader as much as at students and historians, No Ordinary Man is a fascinating study of the life and work of Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616), the writer known as the "Spanish Shakespeare" and author of the timeless classic Don Quixote. A renaissance man in all senses of the term, Cervantes was, in his time, an adventurer, spy, soldier, hostage, and creator of the first European novel. This biography is based on the latest original research and incorporates previously unpublished material on Cervantes’ long period of captivity in Algiers, his involvement in piracy in the Mediterranean, espionage, and the Spanish Armada, and his work for the Spanish government. Containing much information never before available in English, No Ordinary Man makes an important contribution to the understanding of this unique literary and historical figure.

Obsessed with tales of gallant knights, Don Quixote, a middle-aged man from La Mancha, decides to take his own adventure. Donning rusty armor and riding upon an old horse, he sets off to change the world and save his invented damsel in distress in the name of chivalry. Unfortunately, Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza are met with a host of ill-intentioned characters, and the pair often find themselves the butt of a joke rather than chivalrous saviors. This renowned tragic comedy, written by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, was first published in Spain in two parts in 1605 and 1615. This is an unabridged version of John Ormsby's English translation from 1885.

In the early seventeenth century, a crippled, graying, almost toothless veteran of Spain's wars against the Ottoman Empire published a book. It was the story of a poor nobleman, his brain addled from reading too many books of chivalry, who deludes himself that he is a knight errant and sets off on hilarious adventures. That book, Don Quixote, went on to sell more copies than any other book beside the Bible, making its author, Miguel de Cervantes, the single most-read author in human history. Cervantes did more than just publish a bestseller, though. He invented a way of writing. This book is about how Cervantes came to create what we now call fiction, and how fiction changed the world. The Man Who Invented Fiction explores Cervantes's life and the world he lived in, showing how his influences converged in his work, and how his work--especially Don Quixote--radically changed the nature of literature and created a new way of viewing the world. Finally, it explains how that worldview went on to infiltrate art, politics, and science, and how the world today would be unimaginable without it. William Egginton has brought thrilling new meaning to an immortal novel.