1547
Alcalá de Henares, Spain
1616
Madrid, Spain

Novelist

"For years, this Cervantes has been a great friend of mine, and he certainly knows a lot more about misfortune than he does about poetry."

The priest, Chapter Six of Don Quixote translated by Burton Raffel.

The Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra is famous for Don Quixote, (pronounced kee-HO-teh) considered one of the great masterpieces of world literature. This work was largely responsible for creating what is known as the modern novel. (A novel is a long written work that tells a story featuring fictional, or imaginary, characters involved in complex plots.) Don Quixote has been translated into more than sixty languages and its central character, Don Quixote of la Mancha, has become a major figure in Western culture. Don Quixote's image has been...