Guzman de Alfarache

Guzman de Alfarache is a Spanish picaresque novel by Mateo Aleman, published in two parts, the first in 1599 and the second in 1604. Narrated in the first person, it follows the picaro Guzman, a young street urchin, as he matures into adulthood through a life of delinquency and roguish misadventure before eventually ending up condemned as a galley slave and seeking absolution for his past, the narrative combining engaging picaresque storytelling with an extended moral commentary that functions as a sustained doctrinal sermon against the sins of the society Guzman moves through. Enormously popular in its own time, the novel was translated into French, German, Italian, Latin and English, James Mabbe's 1622 English version appearing under the alternate titles The Rogue and The Life of Guzman de Alfarache, and it stands alongside Lazarillo de Tormes as one of the foundational texts of the Spanish picaresque tradition.