It was only a few years ago that I randomly picked up a copy of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote. In Edith Grossman’s stunning translation, which was new at the time, the four hundred year old novel was brought to life in a way I couldn’t have imagined possible. A weighty tome in both size and scope it held me enrapt for weeks. (Pick up any piece of fiction written in the last two hundred years and you’ll see the debt to Cervantes on every page) I knew the author spent a significant period of his life abroad, but didn’t realize his ties to the capital until now. Cervantes died in Madrid, coincidentally on the same day as William Shakespeare: April 23, 1616.
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