Join co-hosts Anne Moore and Chris Stacey for an innovative, exciting, and passionate approach to world literature. Our current country is Spain during the “Golden Age”. Our second selection is The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes translated from the Spanish by W.S. Merwin. Lazarillo de Tormes is the first picaresque novel ever written and the inspired precursor to works as various as Vanity Fair and Huckleberry Finn. Banned by the Spanish Inquisition after publication in 1554, Lazarillo was soon translated throughout Europe, where it was widely copied. The book is a favorite to this day for its vigorous colloquial style and the earthy realism with which it exposes human hypocrisy. The bastard son of a prostitute, Lazarillo goes to work for a blind beggar, who beats and starves him, while teaching him some very useful dirty tricks. The boy then drifts in and out of the service of a succession of masters, each vividly sketched and together revealing the corrupt world of imperial Spain. Its miseries are made all the more apparent by the candor and surprising good cheer with which young Lazarillo recounts his ever more curious fate.

Club Member Registration: The book club is exclusively for club members. Here is a list of club members: CUCC Club Members. If you are not a club member, join and we'll see you at the book club: Become a Club Member.

Available Seats: There are 7 seats available as of November 6, 2026.

Date: Thursday, April 1, 2027

Social Hour: 5:00pm

Book Club: 6:00PM Central

Location: Private room. Club on Michigan Avenue.

Non-Club Members Wait List: All registrants who are not club members are placed on a wait list. You are contacted if any seats are available after club member registration. 

Reviews

Lazarillo's success was immediate and its popularity enormous. As for its impact on the literary imagination, suffice to say that it was the cornerstone for the entire structure of the modern novel. — Francisco Ayala

My readings and rereadings of Lazarillo never disappoint me. The protagonist is a live creation, a boy who becomes adept in the daily struggle for existence, endures a series of bitter experiences, discovers the world's injustices, and adapts pragmatically to them....[Lazaro's path] is the path pursued by the unstable, transitory character of the modern novel....[He is] our contemporary! — From "The Introduction" by Juan Goytisolo

Photo Credit: NYRB Classics, Promotional Material, Public Domain.