Fortunata and Jacinta : two stories of married women

Capturing a ninteenth-century Spanish world of political tumult and personal obsession, Benito Pérez Galdós's Fortunata and Jacinta tells of two women who love the same man unfailingly - one as his mistress, the other as his wife. In this new and complete translation, Agnes Moncy Gullón presents the detailed realism, the diversity of character and scene that have placed Fortunata and Jacinta alongside the voluminous works of Charles Dickens and Honoré de Balzac. Galdós's Madrid, recast from his youthful wanderings through the city's slums and cafés, includes the egg sellers and faded bullfighters surrounding Fortunata as well as the quieter, sequestered milieu of Jacinta's upbringing. Through Juanito, the lover of both women, the writer reveals Spain as a variegated fabric of delicate traditions and established vices, of shaky politics and rich intrigue. In this vast and colorful world, resonant of Dickens's London and Balzac's France, Galdós presents his characters with a depth, ambiguity, and humor born of the multiplicity of his scene. Galdoz's four-part Fortunata and Jacinta (1886-7), the masterpiece among his almost 80 novels, tells the turbulent story of two women, their husbands and their lovers, set against the intricate web of dynastic alliances and class contrasts of Madrid in the 1870s. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. A novel about a man with "a flexible conscience", the woman he marries, and the woman who is his mistress, married to a poor apothecary. This is a love story with a difference, with a vast stage of very likeable characters, depth of detail and glimpses of Spanish politics in the post-Napoleonic era. It is also a classic of modern Spanish realism, a tragedy lightened with real humour and kindness. A good English translation by Agnes Moncy Gullón is available on the Internet Archive "Capturing a nineteenth-century Spanish world of political tumult and personal obsession."