PIRACY, POLITICS AND POWER SET AGAINST THE VIBRANT BACKDROP OF THE INFAMOUS SIXTEENTH CENTURY BARBARY COAST The year is 1576. A raid on the English township of Poole sees the abduction of sixteen year-old Jonathan Comber and his young sister Emma. Jonathan is taken to the North African port of Salé by renegade corsair captain Joshua Ward; Emma is auctioned into slavery and consigned to the harem of the Bey of Algiers. In the interim, brothers Miguel and Rodrigo de Cervantes Saavedra, veterans on their way home from service in the Spanish garrison in Naples, have been captured by North African pirates and imprisoned in the notorious jail of Algiers, from which they are resolved at all costs to escape.THE SALLEE ROVERS charts the progressively interlinked destinies of these principal characters against a complex ethnic and cultural backdrop. The novel draws on the documented experiences of Miguel de Cervantes, who languished five years in an Algerian prison before being ransomed and returned to his native Spain, where he would go on to write his celebrated novel Don Quixote ...