Portal:Literature/Biography archive/2006, Week 40

Miguel de Cervantes (Spanish pronunciation: [miˈɣel ðe θerˈβantes saˈβe(ð)ra]) (September 29, 1547 – April 23, 1616), was a Spanish novelist, poet and playwright. He is best known for his novel Don Quixote de la Mancha, which is considered by many to be the first modern novel, one of the greatest works in Western literature, and the greatest in the Spanish language. It is one of the Encyclopædia Britannica's "Great Books of the Western World" and the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky called it "the ultimate and most sublime word of human thinking". Cervantes is so well regarded that his face is depicted on most Spanish Euro coins, and his image is common in Spanish book stores. Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion learned the Spanish language so that he could read Don Quixote in the original.