Person

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish writer and one of the great founders of the modern novel, transforming chivalric dreams, human folly, and the longing for dignity into a work of lasting world literature. In Don Quixote, he created the deluded knight of La Mancha and his loyal Sancho Panza, writing them with humour, tenderness, and a profound sympathy for a man who insists on seeing the world as nobler than it is. His work includes novels, novellas, plays, and poetry, though Don Quixote remains his most famous and influential legacy. Cervantes’s own life was nearly as adventurous as his fiction: he served as a soldier, was captured by pirates, and spent years in captivity in Algiers. Perhaps that is why his masterpiece understands so well that the ridiculous and the noble are not enemies — they often ride side by side.