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The Death and Life of Miguel De Cervantes
Recreates the life story of the author of the classic novel Don Quixote, in which he survives his humble beginnings and international espionage only to cross paths with such contemporaries as the real William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe.
512 pages, Hardcover
First published October 3, 1991
18 people are currently reading
165 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Marlowe
193 books26 followersAka Milton S. Lesser, Adam Chase, Andrew Frazer, Jason Ridgway, C.H. Thames.
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.
Marlowe received the Shamus Award, "The Eye" (Lifetime achievment award) in 1997.
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.
Marlowe received the Shamus Award, "The Eye" (Lifetime achievment award) in 1997.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
September 26, 2019
“But history is—” “Truth?” Cide Hamete supplied. “Because it’s documents? But why should the ledger be truer than the legend? The merely measureable truer than the truly memorable?”
Monumental effort: for both the author and the reader. Extrapolating from Cervantes’ great fictional work Don Quixote and contemporary history, Marlowe casts this tongue-in-cheek autobiography. Lots of literary and historical references.
“The first thing writers of fiction have to do is willingly—not just willingly but joyfully—suspend their own disbelief.”
Marlowe recreates Cervantes style to mind-numbing effect. The reader has no doubt where the story is going—or isn’t—but the ride becomes tedious. A hundred pages could be excised and the story would be so much the better.
“To submit to fate was the folly of the weak, and in those days I worshipped at the altar of free will, the folly of the strong.”
True believers will love it. Others will find treasures among the dross.
“It’s bad enough when, in relating Don Quixote’s story, you keep interrupting yourself to tell what other characters are doing, but to be guilty of the same lack of focus in your own death and life is positively absurd.”
Monumental effort: for both the author and the reader. Extrapolating from Cervantes’ great fictional work Don Quixote and contemporary history, Marlowe casts this tongue-in-cheek autobiography. Lots of literary and historical references.
“The first thing writers of fiction have to do is willingly—not just willingly but joyfully—suspend their own disbelief.”
Marlowe recreates Cervantes style to mind-numbing effect. The reader has no doubt where the story is going—or isn’t—but the ride becomes tedious. A hundred pages could be excised and the story would be so much the better.
“To submit to fate was the folly of the weak, and in those days I worshipped at the altar of free will, the folly of the strong.”
True believers will love it. Others will find treasures among the dross.
“It’s bad enough when, in relating Don Quixote’s story, you keep interrupting yourself to tell what other characters are doing, but to be guilty of the same lack of focus in your own death and life is positively absurd.”
October 18, 2020
A novel well written, intriguing from the very beginning. But soon my interest began to fade. Why? I met quite a few minor characters along the way there I wouldn’t choose to care about. I wanted first and foremost to follow the thoughts and opinions of Cervantes.
But all right, it is fiction, no damage to his image done, let’s suppose these events really happened in his life. The more, I would rather believe such troubles and sufferings and adventures could have added sufficiently to the conception of Don Quixote.
So, this book is a treat in its own way.
But all right, it is fiction, no damage to his image done, let’s suppose these events really happened in his life. The more, I would rather believe such troubles and sufferings and adventures could have added sufficiently to the conception of Don Quixote.
So, this book is a treat in its own way.
October 5, 2008
Stephen Marlowe has a definite flare when it comes to historical fiction. His magical realism often explodes into full-blown, delightfully fanciful fantasy... which, for the most part, is very nice--and comes across fine in this novel, though in his 'Lighthouse at the End of the World', it can get a bit muddled and confusing. If you like swashbuckling adventure stories--worthy of the exploits of Don Quixote himself--you'll love this book......
December 1, 2008
One of the funniest books I have ever read! This is the book my username finds its origin in. Fake biographies are the best ones.
October 13, 2023
I read this first, and then reviewed Jaime Manrique's take in his own fictionalized "autobiography," Cervantes Street. First off, Marlowe (his pen name, and his inspiration enters as "Quillpusher"...): author of a slew of whodunits and space operas over a long career, his own leanings towards "mass-market" entertainment may have led him to try a more challenging (!?) subject. This set of intricate tales, dozens of characters, shape-shifters, adepts of an unnamed Abbot with considerable reach and clout, and a plot that defies summary make for a dense, but wry, witty, and even philosophical, immersion. It even touches on profundity, amidst excellent evocations of both the Battle of Lepanto and the real-Cervantes' long years enslaved in Algiers. He also peppers the pages with characters that become real, whether from the scanty historical record, or, as in "Quillpusher" a few plucked from celebrity or repute, common in most tellings of what we think may have happened. Marlowe delights in his protagonist's perplexities, and he incorporates derring-do a-plenty, given his tendency. I confess some of this--as in the "Abbot" sub-plot eluded my grasp.
It sure is long. I felt that Marlowe could have cut a lot. This weighs in over six hundred pages. Maybe half the size of Don Quixote, but with as many divergences, detours, dramatizations (some quite clever as "Cervantes" tries to pull off his rival Lope de Vega's insistence on the Aristotelian unities). I don't think even Marlowe could follow his own convolutions at times, yet again a self-referential touch that the somewhat omniscient "Cervantes" tries to disentangle, as he attempts to tell of his own career while spinning tall tales that would cause anyone to scratch a few hairs.
Still, as "Cervantes" name-drops his family's connections to Columbus, it makes me want to take up Marlowe's later rendering of "The Memoirs" of that Genoese navigator. Curiousity's sparked...
It sure is long. I felt that Marlowe could have cut a lot. This weighs in over six hundred pages. Maybe half the size of Don Quixote, but with as many divergences, detours, dramatizations (some quite clever as "Cervantes" tries to pull off his rival Lope de Vega's insistence on the Aristotelian unities). I don't think even Marlowe could follow his own convolutions at times, yet again a self-referential touch that the somewhat omniscient "Cervantes" tries to disentangle, as he attempts to tell of his own career while spinning tall tales that would cause anyone to scratch a few hairs.
Still, as "Cervantes" name-drops his family's connections to Columbus, it makes me want to take up Marlowe's later rendering of "The Memoirs" of that Genoese navigator. Curiousity's sparked...
March 6, 2021
This book is great, I read it before i even read Miguel de Cervantes masterpiece. I recall I was in Borders and looking for something new, and I stumble across this book. It is great.
August 9, 2021
I think Cervantes would have enjoyed this romp. Self-referential, convoluted and sometimes exasperating, but at the end you find yourself saying tameji rawi?
February 24, 2023
A very excellent book.
December 20, 2025
Outstanding. Replicates the style and tone of Don Quixote, and acts as a love letter to its author.
February 25, 2017
very creative..biography..sort of...Be surprised
October 18, 2012
Originally published on my blog here in February 2001.
This trendy-at-the-time novel takes the known facts about the life and background of the creator of Don Quixote, adds fantasy and knowing humour (of a style reminiscent of both Salman Rushdie and John Barth) and comes up with an enjoyable story.
Miguel de Cervantes certainly lived a full life. In the Spanish army at the battle of Lepanto, captured by Algerian pirates, reprieved from execution (which begins the novel, hence the title), imprisoned several times, anathematised by the church, write of one of the most famous novels of all time. To this, Marlowe adds a career as a spy, infatuation with his sister, and a mystic mentor - who is the Arab writer whose work the introduction to Don Quixote claims Cervantes translated as the novel. It is a rich mixture, and it is occasionally rather annoying, with various not particularly subtle ironies involved in the narrative.
The novel's main problem is that Marlowe is too conscious that he is being clever. The prose frequently seems to be saying "Look at me!", and this is tiring. In small doses it is enjoyable, and Cervantes is at least interesting to read about.
This trendy-at-the-time novel takes the known facts about the life and background of the creator of Don Quixote, adds fantasy and knowing humour (of a style reminiscent of both Salman Rushdie and John Barth) and comes up with an enjoyable story.
Miguel de Cervantes certainly lived a full life. In the Spanish army at the battle of Lepanto, captured by Algerian pirates, reprieved from execution (which begins the novel, hence the title), imprisoned several times, anathematised by the church, write of one of the most famous novels of all time. To this, Marlowe adds a career as a spy, infatuation with his sister, and a mystic mentor - who is the Arab writer whose work the introduction to Don Quixote claims Cervantes translated as the novel. It is a rich mixture, and it is occasionally rather annoying, with various not particularly subtle ironies involved in the narrative.
The novel's main problem is that Marlowe is too conscious that he is being clever. The prose frequently seems to be saying "Look at me!", and this is tiring. In small doses it is enjoyable, and Cervantes is at least interesting to read about.
July 10, 2020
A highly imaginative narrative of the life of the author of “Don Quixote de La Mancha.” Living in the time of the Inquisition and imprisoned in Algeria, Miguel de Cervantes was witness to a lot of horrible atrocities, many of which are described here in gruesome detail. In his voice as the narrator, Cervantes might be the first to observe that author wrote the book as a series of overlapping digressions. At times they are entertaining, but often slow-paced and repetitious.
March 12, 2008
He took a fabulous and fascinating history and junked it up with a whole lot of bullshit. Total waste.
January 29, 2008
Awesome. Fantastic book. Read it.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews