The Life of Lazarillo of Tormes Author:Robert S. Rudder (Translator) When it was first published, anonymously, about 1550, "The Life of Lazarillo of Tormes" quickly captured all of Spain with its realism and sage accceptance of life. Soon it was being read with delight all over Europe. For four centuries, this masterpiece has endered itself to readers of every taste. In its lively new translation, it will continu... more »e to entertain still another generation of readers.
Deceptively simple and tongue-in-cheek, Lazarillo spins a story of adventure and human wiles that displays in full measure the folly of man and the irony of life. Does it have a happy ending? Each reader will have to make up his own mind. The unknown author of "Lazarillo" initiated a literary genre still very much alive: the picaresque novel - a tradition to which we owe such works as "Tom Jones," "Huckleberry Finn," and, in our own day, Gunther Grass' "The Tin Drum."
Of the scores of imitations that appeared after the success of "Lazarillo," the only one with true literary merit of its own is included here: "The Second Part of The Life of Lazarillo of Tormes" was writted in 1620 by Juan de Luna, a political and religious refugee who probably spent his last years in London. His venom for the church did not keep him from telling a witty, entertaining, spicy story.
The 73 drawings by the seventeenth-century Dutch painter Leonard Bramer appear in an American edition for the first time.« less