Lazarillo de Tormes

The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes is an important novel in Spanish literature.
Lázaro is a boy of humble origins from Salamanca. His father dies and after his stepfather is accused of thievery, his mother asks a blind beggar to take Lazarillo on as his apprentice. Lázaro develops his cunning while serving the blind beggar and several other masters, while also learning to take on his father's practice. The book describes how hard his life with his different masters is.

Some facts about the book from Wikipedia:

• It was published anonymously in 1554 but documents recently discovered that the author was Diego Hurtado de Mendoza.
• It founded a literary genre, the picaresque novel, from the Spanish word pícaro, meaning "rogue" (απατεώνας) or "rascal" (κατεργάρης, κακοποιός). In novels of this type, the adventures of the pícaro expose injustice (αδικία) while amusing the reader. This genre includes the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.
• Lazarillo also influenced 20th century "anti-hero" novels, dramas and films.
• The author criticises many organisations and groups of persons through the different masters that Lazarillo serves, especially the appearance and hipocrisy of the Catholic Church (five of Lazarillo' s eight masters in the novel serve the church). Because of this, the book was banned by the Spanish Crown.
• Long before Oliver Twist and Huckleberry Finn, the anonymous author of Lazarillo treated a boy as a boy, not a small adult.
• Long before modern treatment of "persons of colour", this author treats sympathetically the pleasures and pains of an interracial family (Lazarillo' s stepfather is black and he has a half-brother who is also dark-coloured).
• Lazarillo means "little Lázaro". The surname de Tormes comes from the river Tormes. In the narrative, Lazarillo explains that his father ran a mill on the river, where he was literally born on the river. The river Tormes runs through Lazarillo's home town, Salamanca, a Castilian university city. (There is an old mill on the river, and a statue of Lazarillo and the blind man next to the Roman bridge in the city.)
• In the book there are characters such as the Cleric, the Friar, the Pardoner, the Priest and the Archbishop. They all have something wrong either with them as a person or with their character. The only named characters are Lazarillo and his family: his mother Antoña Pérez, his father Tomé Gonzáles, and his stepfather El Zayde.

The Spanish eTwinners that take part in the ESN go to a school named after Lazarillo. In Spain, 23rd April is a public holiday and also "World Book day". In Salamanca, the hometown of our friends, they do an activity on that date: a continuous reading of the book Lazarillo de Tormes. They do hangouts with different schools every year. This year the date for this reading will be the 22nd April (as the 23rd is a Saturday.

YOUR TASK
Read these two pages from the novel about Lazarillo and the blind man and try to read it aloud as better as you can. We can make a recording of your narration and upload it on Twinspace for our Spanish friends.

Lazarillo in English.22-23 on Scribd