Pasamonte's Life

"Pasamonte's Life is the third of Robin Chapman's novels to pick up a strand of a story from Cervante's Don Quixote and develop it." "Early on in his career as a knight-errant, Don Quixote sets free a chain-gang of convicted criminals on their way to serve as galley slaves. Chief among them is the brutally cheerful villain Gines de Pasamonte. If Don Quixote aspires to be the flower of old-fashioned chivalry, then Pasamonte is the flower of up-to-date villainy. He tells Don Quixote that he is writing his autobiography but has pawned the half-finished manuscript in order to have money to buy preferential treatment in the galleys. But, villain that he is, once freed, Pasamonte encourages his fellow convicts to beat up Don Quixote and then he steals Sancho Panza's donkey; later in the story Pasamonte reappears as the puppeteer, Master Pedro." "Cervantes never relates what happened to Pasamonte, but Robin Chapman has filled out his picaresque story, and here - as his ghost-writer - tells how he goes about recovering his manuscript, and what it reveals of his past, and how his life leads on from there to one knavish deed after another."--BOOK JACKET.