Exemplary Novels of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Cervantes wrote these twelve stories in the twilight of Spain's Golden Age, daring to do something no novelist had quite attempted before: hold a mirror to ordinary Spanish life and call it exemplary. Where his Don Quixote ridiculed knight errantry, these briefer works turn their attention to rogues, servants, students, and fallen women, treating them with a compassion and sharp observational humor that feels startlingly modern. The collection ranges from picaresque adventures of young thieves in Seville to the enchanting tale of a kitchen maid who captures an entire city's heart, from a young man's comical descent into madness after drinking enchanted water to a pair of talking dogs who offer some of the most biting social commentary in the book. Each story works as its own small world, yet all share Cervantes's radical conviction that virtue hides in unexpected places. These are the stories that helped invent the modern short novel, and they remain alive with wit, tenderness, and the unmistakable voice of the man who changed fiction forever.