Skip to content

From the archives

Seeing Stars

Expansionist jabs over the years

Conspiracy Interceptor

Facts and fictions of the Avro Arrow

Slouching toward Democracy

Where have all the wise men gone?

Lara El Mekaui

Lara El Mekaui edits at The New Quarterly and teaches at the University of Waterloo.

Articles by
Lara El Mekaui

While He Wrote

Martha Bátiz tells an untold story July | August 2025
Throughout his tumultuous literary career, Miguel de Cervantes was supported by his sisters, wife, niece, and daughter. They played pivotal roles in his life, yet little is known about the hidden figures behind the author of Don Quixote, whose idealistic and often delusional protagonist echoes his own fraught relationship with women. Martha Bátiz highlights the lives of these family members in A Daughter’s Place by picturing an untold aspect of the Spanish writer’s story: the experiences of those who…