Lazarillo de Tormes

Lazaro, born to poor parents near Salamanca, is given as a guide to a blind beggar after his father dies, and so begins a string of masters who each starve and cheat him in turn. He serves a blind man who teaches him cruelty and cunning, a priest who locks away his bread, and a ragged squire too proud to admit he has nothing to eat. Through each placement Lazaro learns to scheme, steal, and survive, narrating his rise in a letter that explains how he came to his comfortable but compromised final post. The short, biting episodes mock the clergy, the nobility, and the gap between Spain's honor culture and its hungry reality.