Fortunata y Jacinta

Both parts of the novel every other novel answers to: a country gentleman reads too many books of chivalry and rides out to fix the world. Long and funny, with Sancho Panza stealing half the scenes.

Miguel de Cervantes

The first picaresque novel: a poor boy serves a blind beggar, a stingy priest and a starving squire, and learns to survive by his wits. Short enough to finish in an evening.

Anónimo

Ana Ozores, bored in a provincial cathedral town, is pulled between a scheming priest and a local seducer. Often called the greatest Spanish novel of the 19th century.

Leopoldo Alas Clarín

A poor, plain girl guides a blind young man through the mining country of northern Spain, until a surgeon offers him his sight. A short, moving way into Galdós.

Benito Pérez Galdós

A young priest arrives at a crumbling Galician manor ruled by a brutal marquis and his steward. The key novel of Spanish naturalism, violent and hard to put down.

Emilia Pardo Bazán