The Death and Life of Miguel de Cervantes: A Novel

By Stephen Marlowe

“An exuberant, fantastical portrait” narrated by the writer of The Adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha himself (The New York Times Book Review).
 
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.
 
“This exemplary fiction matches incredible fact with ingenious storytelling.” —Publishers Weekly
 
“Sly, irreverent, and written in a galloping contemporary style, this book is hugely entertaining.” —Library Journal
 
“An exuberant mock autobiography by an established writer of historical fiction . . . A spirited and witty tale for a sophisticated readership.” —Booklist
 
“Marlowe’s 12th novel follows the pattern of his fictional portraits of Christopher Columbus and Edgar Allan Poe, as he surveys the life and times of the Renaissance soldier-writer who was Shakespeare’s exact contemporary and who earned immortality as the author of Don Quixote.” —Kirkus Reviews

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 7, 2012
• ISBN: 9781628720013

Stephen Marlowe

Stephen Marlowe (1928–2008) was the author of more than fifty novels, including nearly two dozen featuring globe-trotting private eye Chester Drum. Born Milton Lesser, Marlowe was raised in Brooklyn and attended the College of William and Mary. After several years writing science fiction under his given name, he legally adopted his pen name, and began focusing on Chester Drum, the Washington-based detective who first appeared in The Second Longest Night (1955). Although a private detective akin to Raymond Chandler’s characters, Drum was distinguished by his jet-setting lifestyle, which carried him to various exotic locales from Mecca to South America. These espionage-tinged stories won Marlowe acclaim, and he produced more than one a year before ending the series in 1968. After spending the 1970s writing suspense novels like The Summit (1970) and The Cawthorn Journals (1975), Marlowe turned to scholarly historical fiction. He lived much of his life abroad, in Switzerland, Spain, and France, and died in Virginia in 2008.