Spanish · Intermediate
Read Narraciones inverosímiles in Spanishwith every sentence explained
English title: Improbable Tales
Pedro Antonio de Alarcón · 1882
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About the book
Narraciones inverosímiles by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón was first published in 1882. In Passage you read the full text in the original Spanish, marked intermediate and filed under fantasy, horror and science fiction. It runs to about 56,900 words.
Death as a best friend. A tall woman who will not stop following you. A winter at the end of the world.
Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, the master storyteller behind The Three-Cornered Hat, also had a darker, stranger side, and this collection shows it off. These tales bend the rules of reason.
In "El amigo de la muerte", Gil Gil, a penniless, proud young man at the end of his rope, is greeted one night by a cold figure in black who offers him friendship and makes him the most famous doctor in Spain. In "La mujer alta", a respected engineer resting in the Guadarrama mountains tells his friends about the tall old woman who has haunted his nights, a story often called the scariest in Spanish. And in "El año en Spitzberg", a man trapped in the Arctic counts the days of an endless winter.
Published in 1882, Improbable Tales is a treat for lovers of the eerie and the unexpected.
- Author
- Pedro Antonio de Alarcón
- First published
- 1882
- Language
- Spanish
- Level
- Intermediate
- Genre
- Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction
- Length
- About 56,900 words
How it opens
Éste era un pobre muchacho, alto, flaco, amarillo, con buenos ojos negros, la frente despejada y las manos más hermosas del mundo, muy mal vestido, de altanero porte y humor inaguantable... Tenía diecinueve años, y llamábase Gil Gil.
Gil Gil era hijo, nieto, biznieto, chozno, y Dios sabe qué más, de los mejores zapateros de viejo de la corte, y al salir al mundo causó la muerte a su madre, Crispina López, cuyos padres, abuelos, bisabuelos y tatarabuelos honraron también la misma profesión.
Reading Narraciones inverosímiles 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.
