This image is the cover for the book The Life and Adventures of Guzman D'Alfarache, or the Spanish Rogue Vol 1 - 3 Complete, Classics To Go

The Life and Adventures of Guzman D'Alfarache, or the Spanish Rogue Vol 1 - 3 Complete, Classics To Go

Guzmán de Alfarache is a picaresque novel written by Mateo Alemán. The works tells the first person adventures of a picaro, a young street urchin, as he matures into adulthood. It thus ultimately both recounts adventures and moralizes on those childish excesses. Guzmán de Alfarache, by this means, is conceived as an extensive doctrinal sermon about the sins of society, and was so received by the author's contemporaries, despite the hybrid qualities between an engaging novel and a moralizing discourse. The novel was highly popular in its time. Many editions were published, not only in Spanish, but in French, German, English, Italian, and Latin.

Mateo Alemán

Mateo Alemán y de Enero (Seville, Spain, 1547 – 1615? in Mexico) was a Spanish novelist and writer. He graduated at Seville University in 1564, studied later at Salamanca and Alcalá, and from 1571 to 1588 held a post in the treasury; in 1594 he was arrested on suspicion of malversation, but was speedily released. According to some authors, he was descended from Jews forcibly converted to Catholicism after 1492, and one of his forebears had been burned by the Inquisition for secretly continuing to practise Judaism. In 1599, he published the first part of Guzmán de Alfarache, a celebrated picaresque novel which passed through no less than sixteen editions in five years; a spurious sequel was issued in 1602, but the authentic continuation did not appear until 1604.

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