Selections from Don Quijote

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) lived a life as adventurous as any novel. As a soldier he was wounded at the naval battle of Lepanto in 1571 and lost the use of his left hand; on his way home he was captured by Barbary corsairs and spent five years as a captive in Algiers, where he tried to escape four times before he was ransomed.

Back in Spain he worked as a tax collector, went to prison more than once and wrote plays and stories with little success, until Don Quixote in 1605 made him famous. He died in Madrid in April 1616, the same month as Shakespeare. Memories of Algiers, and a pretend Arab historian, appear throughout his work.