- Paperback: 144 pages
- Publisher: NYRB Classics; Tra edition (Dec 31 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1590171322
- ISBN-13: 978-1590171325
- Product Dimensions: 12.8 x 1 x 20.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 181 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #856,575 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Book Description
Spain has produced two books that changed world literature: Don Quixote and Lazarillo de Tormes, the first picaresque novel ever written and the inspired precursor to works as various as Vanity Fair and Huckleberry Finn. Banned by the Spanish Inquisition after publication in 1554, Lazarillo was soon translated throughout Europe, where it was widely copied. The book is a favorite to this day for its vigorous colloquial style and the earthy realism with which it exposes human hypocrisy.
The bastard son of a prostitute, Lazarillo goes to work for a blind beggar, who beats and starves him, while teaching him some very useful dirty tricks. The boy then drifts in and out of the service of a succession of masters, each vividly sketched and together revealing the corrupt world of imperial Spain. Its miseries are made all the more apparent by the candor and surprising good cheer with which young Lazarillo recounts his ever more curious fate.
This version of Lazarillo, by the prizewinning poet and translator W.S. Merwin, brings out the wonderful vitality and humor of this universal masterwork.
The author of Lazarillo de Tormes is unknown.
The bastard son of a prostitute, Lazarillo goes to work for a blind beggar, who beats and starves him, while teaching him some very useful dirty tricks. The boy then drifts in and out of the service of a succession of masters, each vividly sketched and together revealing the corrupt world of imperial Spain. Its miseries are made all the more apparent by the candor and surprising good cheer with which young Lazarillo recounts his ever more curious fate.
This version of Lazarillo, by the prizewinning poet and translator W.S. Merwin, brings out the wonderful vitality and humor of this universal masterwork.
The author of Lazarillo de Tormes is unknown.
About the Author
The author of The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes is unknown. W. S. Merwin (Hawaii) has written many books and has received both the Pulitzer and the Bollingen prizes.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
Well in the first place Your Excellency should know that they call me Lazaro de Tormes, and I am the son of Tome Gonzalez and of Antona Perez, both of them natives of Tejares, a hamlet in the neighborhood of Salamanca. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Well in the first place Your Excellency should know that they call me Lazaro de Tormes, and I am the son of Tome Gonzalez and of Antona Perez, both of them natives of Tejares, a hamlet in the neighborhood of Salamanca. Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.5 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Looking at the positive in face of adversity, Feb 12 2010
By Hoydytoydy - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes (Paperback)
I read this book years ago and really enjoyed it. The stories are full of humor and the ending has a good outlook on life - be happy with what you have because things can always be worse. Life isn't perfect and Lazarillo experiences and explains selfishness and greed in humanity in a voice that knows of what he speaks. This is a very easy and quick read that is hard to put down once you start it.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A precursor to Huckleberry Finn, April 1 2008
By BOOKIES - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes (Paperback)
I read this short comic masterpiece as part of a survey course in Spanish and Latin American literature along with more monumental and recognized works of the genre (Cervantes' Don Quijote, Unamuno's Fog, and Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, to name a few.)To my surprise, this little tome was the liveliest, most engaging, and by far, the most digestible of the lot (although the other three are indispensable reading and highly recommended as well).
Lazarillo de Tormes ranks as one of the true cornerstones of world literature yet (INHO) it is still riproaringly funny and insightful without being heavy-handed or tedious. Even though I read Lazarillo in Spanish and cannot commment on this translation, I imagine the story would translate without much ado into English. As a first-year Spanish student, I devoured it in a single afternoon.
In many ways, it seems to me to be the precursor to Hucklebery Finn. I came away from reading this short tome with the same sense of empathy for the character of Lazarillo as I had had for Huck Finn. Like HF, the tale of Lazarillo de Tormes is episodic in nature with a series of adventures featuring quirky antagonists who are each (the reader later realizes) satiric portraits of the various social classes of the day (the priest, the gentleman, the beggar thief, etc.) Both books inspired laughter, pathos, sympathy, empathy -- and ultimately, an overarching sense of the flawed yet ultimately endearing human qualities that imbue us all-- and transcend the centuries. Even though Lazarillo de Tormes predates Twain's masterpiece by three full centuries, I found it equally accessible, being a delightful and extremely quick read. In short, it is one of the earliest examples of the proto-novel, and to my mind-- still one of the best.
Highly recommended for all readers of all ages.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Inspiring English translation, Aug 20 2006
By R. F. Lukner - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes (Paperback)
One of the finest renditions into the English language of the Spanish novel "The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes", the fountainhead of the Picaresque in modern European narration.
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