This Short Novel Is About Confinement, Both Of The Mind And Of The Body, And Therefore Also About Liberation.set In The Last Years Of The 16th Century,cautivosis A Meditation On Writing, Writers, And Creativity. Then As Now, Islam And Christianity Were At Loggerheads And Women Found Themselves Playing New Roles, And Imprisonment Or Worse Was Society's Answer To Everything From Murder To Dissent. Writeractivist Ariel Dorfman Imagines For Us Scenes From The Picaresque Life Of Miguel De Cervantes, A Man Who Wrestled As Intensely With The Contradictions Implicit In Writing Fiction-how Can One Write Something Real If It Is Labelled Fiction, But In Fact How Can One Write Anything Real Unless It Is Fiction?as Any Scribbler Who Followed Him In The Centuries Since.