This first picaresque "novel"--more of a novella really--is an excellent introduction to the genre and a good book on its own merits. It is also funny (I laughed out loud more than a few times, and I don't do that for anybody but Wodehouse), the atmosphere is realistic and gritty, filled with memorable character portraits (the down-at-heels gentleman who would rather starve than reveal his shameful poverty is a particularly notable--and characteristically Spanish--example), and the overall tone

Rubens' painting of "Democritus and Heraclitus" was before my inner eye, and Juvenal's following words rang in my head while reading this hilarious, picaresque road trip through 16th century Spain: "The first of prayers, best known at all the temples, is mostly for riches... Seeing this then do you not commend the one sage Democritus for laughing... and the master of the other school Heraclitus for his tears?" What can a philosopher do, but laugh - and cry - at the state of the world shown in t...

This one came recommended by Ol’ Soiled Slacks—a neighbor, of sorts, just a short drive from here, a pleasant afternoon’s…wait, no one voluntarily goes to Indiana, anywhere in Indiana. There are scads of Republicans there, fundamentalists aplenty, and a surprising number of nudist camps. The place is scary, and the contents of the water there is suspect at best. In any case.So here I was, casually making my way through some pretty incredible Latin American authors, occasionally dipping into the

Where reading is concerned, I'm more LOTI than LOL. That's right. I'm admittedly frugal with my outwardly expressed laughter—unlike the normative social behavior these days wherein giggling becomes a nervous tic to punctuate every banal and unfunny comment. Maybe we want life to be funny so we laugh at it whether it is or not. We inflict an impoverished semblance of humor upon the world. And if we don't happen to mirror the laughter of our neighbors when they read one of those dumb jokey chain e...

When I rate my books, I take into account several factors, and unsurprisingly one of these is my enjoyment. Lazarillo de Tormes is easy and quick to read, and while not being the most original story out there (the synopsis being: Lazaro finds some funny ways to steal food from his masters. The end), it certainly has a great literary importance. In spite of this importance, however, I don't think this is a book that can be read "for pleasure" today; it had a meaning in the time it was written, bu...

Uhh... not what I expected. That this book was found in the Spanish Queen's bureau as well as in any peasants' dingy quarters means little. Perhaps I am angry that the Spanish was verrrry difficult to read? It was old school Spanish, & although I try to get back into the groove, it seemed archaic and mundane. I noticed a profusion of hunger & a constant mention of food. I felt the same way: hungry for more (at least something akin to the royal feast that is the Quixote).Hey, guess what. I think

Truly remarkable that this work was first published in 1554. Remarkable also that it became an immediate international success. What that should tell us is that human foibles have not changed since, well, we started recording human foibles. A small boy, a prostitute's bastard son, makes the best of a brutal existence, mooring to one master after another, doing what it takes to survive. He faces greed and naïveté, pretentiousness and self-loathing, cruelty, and always hunger. He learns well enoug...

I loved this book. Written in the 1550s in Spain before Don Quixote it is a classic picaresque novel and satire. It is anonymous and there is no doubt much scholarly debate about who wrote it. It is about a boy, Lazaro who is abandoned and has to find work with a series of masters. He is abused and ill-treated and learns to adapt, beg and steal to survive. It is a very clever satire on those in authority, especially the church. The book reminded me of Erasmus and his attack on simony and indulge...

If Horace Walpole’s 1764 novel, The Castle of Otranto started the gothic genre, in 1554 Lazarillo de Tormes’ started the picaresque genre. This is the genre where the likes of Don Quixote by Cervantes, Tom Jones by Henry Fielding and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain belong. Oh I have not read any of them yet (shame on me) but aha I have already read The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow!In picaresque novels, there is a picaro or a rascal exposing the injustices in his soci...

One can imagine the anonymous author of Lazarillo de Tormes sitting down to write in a mood similar to that of Erasmus when he penned In Praise of Folly, or of Voltaire when he composed Candide: full of the wry amusement of one engaged in a learned, witty, and irreverent literary exercise. And yet this book, like those other two, quickly became something far more than an elegant diversion. For with Lazarillo the author spawned an entire literary genre, the picaresque, creating a character and a

In the prologue, the author makes mention of fortune and those that are born into it -- rightly stating that little credit is due since luck of the gene pool was partial to them from the start. But what of those Fortune was against? "Who had nothing to thank but their own labor and skill at the oars for bringing them into a safe harbor?"What about the Lazaros of life? Born in (yes, in) the Tormes River; son to a morally unrestrained mother and swindler for a father, poor Lazaro was furiously tre...

One of my 5 top rated books ever! Read several times, and never got tired of doing it again!Simply wonderful and funny!. Pity we will never know who wrote it!

Picaresque novel dating from the middle of the 16th century. The humor is boisterous and funny; Lazarillo is a real anti-hero. The episodic structure of the story is strongly reminiscent of the Roman author Apuleius and his classic The Golden Ass. Especially women and ecclesiastical figures play a naïve role.

The past few months have been craptastacular in the life department, a yo-yo of highs and lows that sort of swung out of control and clocked me in the head at concussive force. Duck? Too late. Then at the beginning of the holiday vacation week, I started to get sick and sicker. I watched Forrest Gump through sneezing and mucous and ended up bawling out even more mucous. I tried to watch the Matrix movies but those made me cry, too! Every scene where two people met eyes meaningfully would set me

despite being nearly half a millennium old, the life of lazarillo de tormes: his fortunes and adversities remains eminently readable, charming, and more than a little funny. published anonymously in 1554 (the authorship debate rages ever on), the novella was banned and later censored as part of the spanish inquisition for its allegedly heretical content. the life of lazarillo de tormes, credited as being the first picaresque work of fiction, follows the (mis)fortunes of young lázaro, a poor span...

This, my friends, is the very first picaresque, a favorite genre of mine (character wanders about the countryside, taking up with various characters and occupations and learning the cold, hard facts of life). Why don't I read more of these? I'm glad to say the first of its breed is just as fresh and lively as 'Candide' or 'A Confederacy of Dunces'. One thing that is always made clear in these types of stories is that human behavior hasn't changed much over the centuries, and even though the repr...

3,5/5 stars. Just read it for Literature class

3.5 ⭐'s

I can't think of anything else written during the 1500's (or probably in any year up to this novella's publication and perhaps a century after) that rolls along in such a delightful, accessible, irreverent and hilarious way. It would be tempting to think that the book was written by a time traveler if it didn't display such an acute awareness of peon-level Europe in the grimy era of indulgences, squires, etc.A few tastes of our hero's voice:"Rather than throw the rope after the bucket, the poor

Maybe to English speakers "El Lazarillo de Tormes" isn't a famous novel, but for Spanish speakers is undoubtedly one of the most prestigious novels in its literary history. Lazarillo is a classic of the Spanish language and it is a great reading for anyone who wants to understand the society of Spanish sixteenth century.Spanish version:Puede que para el mundo anglosajón el Lazarillo de Tormes no sea una novela muy conocida, pero para los hispano hablantes es sin duda una de las novelas más famos...

As I gather this is one of the first truly satirical novels in the history of fiction, about a poor peasant's quest to find a decent master. A series of vignettes poking fun at his social superiors and, in a deeper way, calling into question the morality of the entire system of Imperial Spain. Is it funny? Not really, most things aren't funny half a millennium after they've been written. More interesting as a historical curiosity than on its own merits (to most current readers, or so I suspect)

NOTE: Because I read this in an edition that paired it with another Spanish picaresque novella, my review from that edition has not shown up for the main single edition. My inelegant solution is to copy and paste my review from there to here. So now I basically have two reviews for the same book, but that's one of the flaws of having multiple editions that do not combine well on the website.----Review: Lazarillo de Tormes, published in 1554, is a book about today.It's about political, religious

3.5 stars. An interesting, engaging, short story about the life of the illegitimate son of a prostitute who works for a numbers of masters. The first master was a beggar who beats and starves Lazarillo. Lazarillo learns to be crafty and copes with a variety of different masters. First published in 1554.

NO

Thank you, Project Gutenberg!I have some very well-read GR friends, and yet, not one of them has read this short little book yet. To each of you I say "WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!?"To describe this book as hysterical is understating it. Laugh out loud ridiculousness might be a little closer to accurate. Misfortune LOVES Lazarillo, from the moment his mother sells him to a blind man and he learns to beg, to his marriage to a less than faithful wife, to his becoming rich, then poor, then rich again...

I gave up on this book just before the half-way point, tired of listening to the rhyming speech patterns in first person, which sounded much like the constant annoying humor adopted by this character in his episode of El Ministerio del Tiempo: cute, but irritating.

A funny and relatively easy read amongst all the classics I've been reading, so it's fair to say I enjoyed Lazarillo for its playfulness with the character protagonist and its straightforward messages.

Short story from Spain written 1554 by an unknown Spanish writer. It's considered to be the first picaresque novel "is a genre of prose fiction that depicts the adventures of a roguish, but "appealing hero", of low social class, who lives by his wits in a corrupt society.[1] Picaresque novels typically adopt a realistic style, with elements of comedy and satire. This style of novel originated in Spain in 1554 and flourished throughout Europe for more than 200 years, though the term "picaresque n...

A funny and clever little gem that strips the glory out of the odyssean hero to leave a scrappy scoundrel in a world populated with the same types. If you imagine two thieves who inadvertantly keep stealing the same gold piece from each other, that's the kind of world Lazaro lives in. The shame is that there is a ton of potential but it never got fleshed out beyond this small novella. Seeing as it was banned by the inquisition I don't doubt the wisdom of writing little and publishing anonymously...

I enrolled in a Spanish literature class and this book was a must read for the course, and I really enjoyed the book.I must admit that it was hard reading the book because I thought about Lazarillo who was 8 years old and everything that he was suffering. Just the thought that so many kids in that time and some in our time suffer tremendously in the hands of people that should take care of them.Anyways, I enjoyed the book and I really do recommend it to anyone. The only thing is that I did read