The Man Who Invented Fiction

How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World

De: William Egginton

Narrado por: Michael Butler Murray

In the early 17th century, a crippled, graying, almost toothless veteran of Spain's wars against the Ottoman Empire published a novel. It was the story of a poor nobleman, his brain addled from studying too many novels of chivalry, who deludes himself that he is a knight errant and sets off on hilarious adventures.

That story, Don Quixote, went on to sell more copies than any other book beside the Bible, making its author, Miguel de Cervantes, the single most-read author in human history. Cervantes did more than just publish a best seller, though. He invented a way of writing. This story is about how Cervantes came to create what we now call fiction - and how fiction changed the world.

The Man Who Invented Fiction explores Cervantes' life and the world he lived in, showing how his influences converged in his work and how his work - especially Don Quixote - radically changed the nature of literature and created a new way of viewing the world. Finally, it explains how that worldview went on to infiltrate art, politics and science and how the world today would be unthinkable without it.

Four hundred years after Cervantes' death, William Egginton has brought thrilling new meaning to an immortal novel.

©2016 William Egginton (P)2016 Audible, Ltd

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Egginton shines in his literary analysis, teasing out Cervantes's genius in accessible prose and showing how Don Quixote paved the way for modern fiction by exploring its characters' inner lives.... An entertaining and thought-provoking reading of Cervantes's masterpiece." (Publishers Weekly)
"William Egginton has written an engaging and enlightening book on the pivotal role of Miguel de Cervantes in the development of western literature. He provides a literary, biographical, and historical overview of Cervantes's life and work in well-written prose mercifully free of jargon, and amply justifies the truth of his wonderfully provocative title. I'm happy to recommend The Man Who Invented Fiction." (Edith Grossman, renowned translator of, among other Spanish language masterpieces, Don Quixote)
"The Man Who Invented Fiction weaves a compelling tapestry of adventures in reading. Told with great panache, William Egginton's presentation combines a unique understanding of Cervantes's life, art, times, and the cultural debates that shaped his revolutionary fiction. It is essential reading." (Marina S. Brownlee, Robert Schirmer Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at Princeton University)

Greta book horribly read

Very beautiful book that opens up the work of Cervantes. But very badly read.
Could someone else please re-record it?

Not really for audio

Some books should be read rather than listened to. If you are not a super fan of Cervantes, I would say that Eggintons book ”The rigor of angels” is much better

Yech

Dear Producer: next time, hire someone who knows how to pronounce Spanish words to read the audiobook about Cervantes. Also, how can a professional voice actor pronounce "chasm" with a "ch" and not a "k" sound at the beginning? This is one isolated instance of the many times the performance pulled me out of the story.

Very Interesting and Informative, but Poorly Read

After listening to "Don Quixote" in Spanish, I next listened to "The Man Who Invented Fiction" to learn about the life and times of Cervantes. I learned much not only about Cervantes but also about "Don Quixote." The author, William Egginton, is an expert and eloquent guide to Cervantes and his writings, and I would highly recommend his book to anyone interested in "Don Quixote" or Cervantes.

As Egginton admitted in the April 2, 2023 episode of the podcast "Not Just the Tudors," his title is hyperbolic, and it felt like he overplayed his hand in crediting Cervantes with the invention of fiction and with the ushering in of the modern world. Even so, the connections he made between Cervantes and many who came after him were compelling. The book could use a little more editing, since there are at least a couple sections that are repeated, word for word.

As for the performance, it was so poor that I initially wanted to return the audiobook. There are several problems with the reading. First, the reader does not speak Spanish, so his pronunciation of the many Spanish words in the book was painful to the ear. Second, the reader fell into an unnatural pattern, especially at the end of clauses or sentences. Instead of dropping his voice as in normal English speech, he tended to elongate the last two syllables and keep the same pitch. I noticed it right away, and it didn't cease to irritate me for the rest of the book. Third, he mispronounced a surprising number of English words, reminding me of Sancho Panza himself. Some of the ones I remember are "chasm," "bureaucratization," "unrequited," "mischievous," "posthumous," and "Castilian," but there were others. Fourth, his attempts to use different voices for the different characters when reading sections of "Don Quixote" were bothersome. They seemed to my ear mischaracterizations, especially of Don Quixote, whom he portrayed as a bumbling idiot instead of the most noble and intelligent lunatic ever, and of Sancho Panza, whom he portrayed as a sniveling nincompoop, instead of an increasingly astute and loyal companion. Also, the voices for the characters did not stay the same throughout the book and started blending together. After hearing the author's voice on the podcast, I wished that he had read his own book.

An Insightful Delight

Eggington engages his topics of Cervantes, Don Quixote's adventures and literary history in informative and delightful.way.