Spanish · Intermediate
Read Lazarillo de Tormes in Spanishwith every sentence explained
English title: The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes
Anónimo · 1554
Free to start · iPhone, iPad & Mac
About the book
Lazarillo de Tormes by Anónimo was first published in 1554. In Passage you read the full text in the original Spanish, marked intermediate and filed under historical fiction and young adult. It runs to about 20,000 words.
Born in a river. Raised by hunger. Too clever to stay down.
Lázaro was born on the banks of the Tormes, near Salamanca, and his poor mother soon hands him over to a blind beggar to work as his guide. His first lesson comes when the old man smashes his head against a stone bull: in this world, only the sharp survive. From then on, Lázaro learns to steal wine through a straw, sneak sausages and outwit every master he serves.
And what masters: a priest so stingy he locks the bread in a chest, a proud nobleman too poor to eat but too vain to admit it, and a parade of rogues and hypocrites. Lázaro tells it all himself, cheekily, to an unnamed "Your Grace".
Published anonymously in 1554, Lazarillo de Tormes invented the picaresque novel and still sits on every Spanish school reading list. Short, funny and sharply satirical, it is the perfect doorway into classic Spanish.
- Author
- Anónimo
- First published
- 1554
- Language
- Spanish
- Level
- Intermediate
- Genre
- Historical Fiction, Young Adult
- Length
- About 20,000 words
How it opens
Yo por bien tengo que cosas tan señaladas, y por ventura nunca oídas ni vistas, vengan a noticia de muchos y no se entierren en la sepultura del olvido, pues podría ser que alguno que las lea halle algo que le agrade, y a los que no ahondaren tanto los deleite; y a este propósito dice Plinio que no hay libro, por malo que sea, que no tenga alguna cosa buena; mayormente que los gustos no son todos unos, mas lo que uno no come, otro se pierde por ello. Y así vemos cosas tenidas en poco de algunos, que de otros no lo son.
Reading Lazarillo de Tormes 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.
