An NYRB Classics Original
The tale of a high-spirited, ambitious young woman or man breaking free from
stifling provincial constraints to pursue a life of independence—this is a
staple of the novel. In Tristana the great Spanish novelist Benito Pérez Galdós
disconcertingly reverses the formula. His beautiful and brilliant and very
winning heroine breaks free from a perverse and imprisoning relationship to a
womanizing older man, supposed by all to be her father. But after a terrible
stroke of misfortune, she retreats—either out of timidity or, perhaps, simply
because confinement has its own power to charm. Tristana, here in an
exceptionally fine and fluent new English rendering