Miguel de Cervantes

Author of Don Quixote (1605/1615), the first modern novel and, by many metrics, the most important book ever written. Cervantes fought at the Battle of Lepanto (1571), lost the use of his left hand, and spent five years as a slave in Algiers. His novel — a knight who mistakes windmills for giants — is simultaneously a parody of chivalric romance and a profound meditation on idealism, madness, reality, and literature itself.

• Roles: Writer, Novelist, Soldier