Born on the banks of the Tormes into a wretched family, little Lázaro becomes the guide of a blind beggar, his first master. So as not to starve, he learns to steal from him: he drinks his wine through a straw and makes off with his sausage. He then serves a miserly priest, then a ruined squire who hides his poverty behind his fine clothes.
Published without the author's name in 1554, then banned by the Inquisition, this short tale full of cunning and dark humour is the very first picaresque novel.
Lázaro tells his own adventures mischievously, and the short chapters are easy to read in the language you are learning.
