Miguel de Cervantes

We all know Miguel de Cervantes – or if you don’t, you missed out on the most epic literary adventures since the invention of the printing press. Cervantes is best known for writing the novel Don Quixote, which basically introduced the world to the concept of “tilting at windmills.” Like other famous authors who had a cool nickname – think Edgar Allan Poe, the “Master of the Macabre,” or J.K. Rowling, the “Queen of Wizards” – Cervantes is often referred to as the “Father of the Modern Novel.” But let’s not forget about his other achievements.

For example, did you know that Cervantes once worked as a tax collector? Apparently, this job wasn’t exactly a cakewalk. One time, he got thrown in jail for some accounting mistakes – which is enough to make anyone want to write a 10,000-page masterpiece about a guy who’s obsessed with medieval knights.

Cervantes also had an interesting love life. He married twice and had at least one illegitimate child (hey, nobody’s perfect). But it was his relationship with an Italian woman named Adriana de Rojas that really stands out. According to some accounts, Cervantes supposedly duelled another man for her hand in marriage. That’s right – he took his job as a writer of novels so seriously that he was willing to risk life and limb to win the heart of his lady love. Talk about dedication.

But perhaps the most interesting thing about Cervantes is the fact that he may have been a secret agent. Seriously – there’s some evidence to suggest that he worked as a spy for the Spanish government. It’s not clear what kind of information he was gathering, but it’s possible that he traveled to other countries and used his writing skills to blend in with the locals. Who knows? Maybe Don Quixote was actually a codebook, and we’ve all been interpreting it wrong for centuries.

In any case, Cervantes was a true Renaissance man. He wrote novels, collected taxes, fought duels, and maybe even worked for the government. And hey, if you think about it, his legacy is still going strong – just ask anyone who’s ever dipped their toes into the world of literary fiction. Long live the Father of the Modern Novel!