Spanish · Advanced
Read Don Segundo Sombra in Spanishwith every sentence explained
English title: Shadows on the Pampas
Ricardo Güiraldes · 1926
Free to start · iPhone, iPad & Mac
About the book
Don Segundo Sombra by Ricardo Güiraldes was first published in 1926. In Passage you read the full text in the original Spanish, marked advanced and filed under historical fiction and young adult. It runs to about 61,100 words.
A runaway boy. A legendary gaucho. The endless open plains.
Fabio is fourteen, fatherless and bored to death in a small town on the Argentine pampas, living with two aunts who barely notice him. He spends his days fishing, running errands and getting into mischief. Then one evening a tall, silent stranger rides into town: Don Segundo Sombra, a cattle drover whose calm strength seems to come from another world.
Fabio makes up his mind on the spot. He packs his few things and slips away to follow Don Segundo on the long cattle drives across the plains. Over the next five years he learns to break horses, sleep under the stars, handle a knife and face storms, fights and heartbreak like a true gaucho.
Ricardo Güiraldes' Don Segundo Sombra (1926) is the great coming-of-age novel of the gaucho world and a classic of Argentine schools. Its rich rural Spanish is a challenge, and a wonderful reward.
- Author
- Ricardo Güiraldes
- First published
- 1926
- Language
- Spanish
- Level
- Advanced
- Genre
- Historical Fiction, Young Adult
- Length
- About 61,100 words
How it opens
En las afueras del pueblo, a unas diez cuadras de la plaza céntrica, el puente viejo tiende su arco sobre el río, uniendo las quintas al campo tranquilo.
Aquel día, como de costumbre, había yo venido a esconderme bajo la sombra fresca de la piedra, a fin de pescar algunos bagresitos, que luego cambiaría al pulpero de "La Blanqueada" por golosinas, cigarrillos o unos centavos.
Reading Don Segundo Sombra 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 advanced, with richer vocabulary and longer sentences. If it feels heavy, start with an intermediate Spanish book and come back to it. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
