Cervantes: Exemplary Stories (Penguin Classics)

Composed throughout Cervantes's writing life and mentioned in "Don Quixote", his "Exemplary Stories" are among the first and finest Spanish short stories: ranging from traditional tales of love to incisive moral fables. In "The Little Gipsy Girl", an Italianate romance, the nomadic life is idealised through a love affair between the beautiful Preciosa and a nobleman who agrees to live as a gipsy to win her heart. Elsewhere, the intricacies of love are further explored in tales such as "The Jealous Extremaduran", while the picaresque "Rinconette and Cortadillo", depicting the friendship between a card-sharper and a pickpocket, presents a very different insight into the lower classes of seventeenth-century Spain. Widely regarded as one of Cervantes's greatest stories, "The Dogs' Colloquy" brilliantly captures Spanish conversation and society in its depiction of a discussion between two dogs mysteriously granted the gift of speech.