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. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

“A heroic history of novel-reading itself.” --The Atlantic In the early seventeenth century, a crippled, graying, almost toothless veteran of Spain's wars against the Ottoman Empire published a book. It was the story of a poor nobleman, his brain addled from reading too many books of chivalry, who deludes himself that he is a knight errant and sets off on hilarious adventures. That book, Don Quixote, went on to sell more copies than any other book beside the Bible, making its author, Miguel de Cervantes, the single most-read author in human history. Cervantes did more than just publish a bestseller, though. He invented a way of writing. This book is about how Cervantes came to create what we now call fiction, and how fiction changed the world. The Man Who Invented Fiction explores Cervantes's life and the world he lived in, showing how his influences converged in his work, and how his work--especially Don Quixote--radically changed the nature of literature and created a new way of viewing the world. Finally, it explains how that worldview went on to infiltrate art, politics, and science, and how the world today would be unimaginable without it. William Egginton has brought thrilling new meaning to an immortal novel.

The first biography to be aimed at the general reader as much as at students and historians, No Ordinary Man is a fascinating study of the life and work of Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616), the writer known as the "Spanish Shakespeare" and author of the timeless classic Don Quixote. A renaissance man in all senses of the term, Cervantes was, in his time, an adventurer, spy, soldier, hostage, and creator of the first European novel. This biography is based on the latest original research and incorporates previously unpublished material on Cervantes’ long period of captivity in Algiers, his involvement in piracy in the Mediterranean, espionage, and the Spanish Armada, and his work for the Spanish government. Containing much information never before available in English, No Ordinary Man makes an important contribution to the understanding of this unique literary and historical figure.

“Don Quixote looms so wonderfully above the skylines of literature, a gaunt giant on a lean nag, that the book lives and will live through his sheer vitality...The parody has become a paragon.”-Vladimir Nabokov “A more profound and powerful work than this is not to be met with...The final and greatest utterance of the human mind.”- Fyodor Dostoyevsky Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote is regarded not only as the first modern novel, but also as one of the most important works of fiction ever produced. The subtle and hopeful irony, resplendent variety of characters and its thoroughly entertaining sense of adventure and friendship has dazzled readers for more than four hundred years. It was published in Spain in two volumes, first in 1605 then followed by the second in 1615. Cervantes’ use of realism and everyday language in Don Quixote was revolutionary at the time, and its influence on the development of literature may only be surpassed by the work of Shakespeare. In the opening of this extraordinary book, Alonso Quijano, a noble living in sixteenth-century Spain, has become consumed with the act of reading, and subsequently assumes the identity of the chivalrous knights that he loves to read about. Transformed into Don Quixote, he embarks on his first ill-fated journey as a “knight”. The defeated Quixote returns home, to only prepare himself better for the next adventure of delusion. On his second journey Quixote has enlisted the peasant Sancho Panza to appropriate the role of his squire. Although the duo is ridiculously mismatched in every sense, their inextricable bond is one of the most fascinating of friendships ever created on paper. Between their disordered adventures -of battling windmills and herds of sheep and endless mishaps- are the stories of those who are encountered on the journey. The book eventually becomes a hall of mirrors, and Cervantes explores preconceptions of narrative, reliability, and morality that are strikingly modern. Ultimately, Quixote’s preposterous fantasies become haunting as the reader of this book will surely begin to question what is real and what is not. The story of Don Quixote has been adapted into numerous forms, including opera, musicals, ballets, music and film. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Don Quixote is both modern and readable.