Spanish · Intermediate
Read Aves sin nido in Spanishwith every sentence explained
English title: Birds Without a Nest
Clorinda Matto de Turner · 1889
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About the book
Aves sin nido by Clorinda Matto de Turner was first published in 1889. In Passage you read the full text in the original Spanish, marked intermediate and filed under historical fiction and romance. It runs to about 52,600 words.
A village in the Andes. A family crushed by debt. A woman who refuses to look away.
When the young couple Lucía and Fernando Marín settle in Kíllac, a remote village in the Peruvian highlands, they are charmed by its mountains and its quiet rhythm of life. But Lucía soon discovers the cruelty hidden behind the calm: the Indigenous families are trapped in endless debt by the very men who should protect them, the parish priest, the governor and the local notables.
When the desperate Marcela begs her for help to save her husband, Juan Yupanqui, and their daughters, Lucía decides to step in. The powerful men of Kíllac do not forgive anyone who gets in their way.
Clorinda Matto de Turner's brave novel of 1889 caused an uproar in Peru and earned its author excommunication. Today Birds Without a Nest is celebrated as a founding work of indigenist literature and a classic of Peruvian schools.
- Author
- Clorinda Matto de Turner
- First published
- 1889
- Language
- Spanish
- Level
- Intermediate
- Genre
- Historical Fiction, Romance
- Length
- About 52,600 words
How it opens
Era una mañana sin nubes, en que la Naturaleza, sonriendo de felicidad, alzaba el himno de adoración al Autor de su belleza.
El corazón, tranquilo como el nido de una paloma, se entregaba a la contemplación del magnífico cuadro.
La plaza única del pueblo de Kíllac mide trescientos catorce metros cuadrados, y el caserío se destaca confundiendo la techumbre de teja colorada, cocida al horno, y la simplemente de paja con alares de palo sin labrar, marcando el distintivo de los habitantes y particularizando el nombre de casa para los notables y choza para los naturales.
Reading Aves sin nido in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in Spanish. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:
- a natural translation of that exact sentence,
- a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
- the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
- all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.
It's marked intermediate: comfortable once everyday Spanish feels familiar, with the harder sentences one tap away. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
