Download or read book Lazarillo de Tormes and the Swindler written by Michael Alpert and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2003-04-24 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The two short novels in this volume follow the adventures of two unlikely heroes-delinquent pícaros living by their wits among corrupt priests and prostitutes, beggars and idle gentlemen, thieves, tricksters, and murderers. Lazarillo de Tormes (1554), published anonymously, provided a literary model for Cervantes' Don Quixote and describes the ingenious ruses employed by a boy from Salamanca to outwit a succession of disreputable masters. Francisco de Quevedo's The Swindler (1626) is a comic yet brutal and sordid account of a servant who wants to become a gentleman but ends up a cardsharp and common criminal.