Best known and loved for DON QUIXOTE, the ground-breaking comic precursor of the modern novel, Cervantes led an extraordinary life every bit as colourful as his works.Born the son of a poor medical practioner, maimed by gunshot as a soldier, held to ransom by Algerian corsairs, and eventually drifting into a literary career, Cervantes could draw upon a range of experience with which to spice up his writings.Written as diversionary pieces to be performed between the main acts of a play, Cervantes's eight interludes included in this anthology are comic gems in their own right.As a genre, 'interludes'were generally disliked by the authorities because of their subversive potential, and those by Cervantes are no exception.Crude, rude robust and anarchically refreshing, EIGHT INTERLUDES reveals that even as a playwright Cervantes was ahead of