Unfortunately, his ship was attacked and captured by Barbary pirates. Upon leaving the army, he set sail to return to his home in Spain in September 1575. Luckily for him (and the world of readers), he was right-handed. He received two gunshot wounds to the chest, and a third bullet permanently damaged his left hand. In a battle at sea in September 1571, Miguel de Cervantes was reported to have fought courageously despite having a fever.

That same year he moved to Italy, and in 1570 he enlisted as a soldier in a Spanish infantry regiment. In 1569, around age 21, he published his first poem. Unlike most Spanish writers of his era, he apparently did not attend university. Little is known of Cervantes’s early education. His family always struggled to make ends meet. His father Rodrigo worked as a surgeon, and his mother Leonor was literate, which was a rarity for women at the time. Miguel de Cervantes was born in a small village outside of Madrid called Alcalá de Henares on (or around) Septemand was the fourth of the seven children. Read on to learn more about this author’s tumultuous life story. He was a notable short-story writer, and a few gems in his 1613 collection of Novelas exemplares (Exemplary Stories) are thought to resemble the ingenuity of Don Quixote, albeit on a much smaller scale. Miguel de Cervantes wrote much more than his famous masterpiece, however he dabbled in a variety of major literary genres.

His novel Don Quixote has been translated into over 60 languages with editions still printed regularly. Miguel de Cervantes is the most important and celebrated figure in Spanish literature. Jby Michelle Margaret Fajkus Hispanic Culture 0 comments Miguel de Cervantes: The Fascinating History of a Literary Genius

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