7 h 10 minAudiobook8 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when the heart wants what family, faith, and reputation forbid?
In Tales of Love, Emilia Pardo Bazán gathers short stories where affection is never far from pride, jealousy, money, habit, or fear. Some tales are tender; others turn bitter. Set against the pressures of Spanish life, they explore the uneasy space between what people feel and what duty asks them to do.
Marriage, family, and church shape private choices in this world. A woman's future can depend on a match arranged for property or standing. Pardo Bazán looks closely at these pressures without making love simple or comfortable. Desire and conscience pull against each other, while class and reputation narrow the room people have to choose.
What you’ll discover
- Love without easy answers Explore feelings tangled with jealousy and pride, where tenderness does not sweep bitterness away.
- The weight of reputation See how family expectations and social standing reach into the most private choices.
- Desire against conscience Enter the struggle between longing for something and believing that longing is wrong.
- Women's uncertain choices Consider a world where marriage can tie a woman's future to property and status.
- A sharp, unsentimental eye Discover short fiction that observes relationships closely, finding both warmth and discomfort in love.
Who will love it
For readers who love short fiction, Spanish writing, and stories of passion, jealousy and marriage told with irony. Also for anyone who enjoys a tale that surprises in its last line.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Love behaves like a trickster in the fables
- Passion and illusion can destroy a person
- Disguises and appearances shape who we love
- Betrayal arrives through small objects
- Beauty and desire live in the mind
- Old people and old memories still burn
- Honor and marriage hold cruel bargains
- Cruelty and fate give the darker tales their force
- Lighter tales add wit and fantasy
- Short stories carry whole lives in a few pages
Who’s who
- MartaA modest young woman who lets a charming stranger into her home on a stormy night and cannot make him leave.
- Trifón LiliosaA hunchbacked piano teacher who plans to win a sheltered pupil's heart as a revenge for the world's contempt.
- IreneA beautiful village girl who is drawn to the poet Camargo and later becomes the nun Sister Aparición.
- LauraA poor seamstress who sells her long golden hair to feed her ailing mother.
- Doña MagdalenaA strict, pious countess whose portrait hides a story of fierce possessive love.
- Afra ReyesA pale, strong-willed young woman from a seaside city whose past is a matter of rumor.
- MartinaA happy, well-loved girl who hopes to marry an artillery captain and finds that his past still holds him.
- Agustín OriolA wealthy young man so shy that he cannot speak to the widow he loves.
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- Large print hardcover
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25 languages, side by side
Tales of Love in 25 languages, side by side, paragraph by paragraph, once the book texts are online: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Tales of Love
by Emilia Pardo Bazán · 1898
A woman tries to escape Love, a traveler outstays his welcome, and a lost heart lies on a city street.
Challenging5–10 hours to read25 languages
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In short
What happens when a woman tries to murder Love, or a man picks up a bleeding heart on a city street? Tales of Love gathers short stories by Emilia Pardo Bazán.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Love behaves like a trickster in the fables
The collection opens with short fables that treat love as a living creature. In Love Murdered, Eve tries every lawful way to escape the little rascal. She travels far, builds a fortified tower, and seals every crack in the walls. Nothing keeps him out.
In The Traveler, a young woman named Marta opens her door to a stranger on a stormy night. His voice is sweet, and soon he rules her house with moods and tantrums. In The Lost Heart, a narrator finds a bleeding heart on the street and puts on magic spectacles to see which woman has lost hers. The first women he approaches have no hearts, yet none will accept the one he offers.
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What is Tales of Love about?
It is a collection of short stories by Emilia Pardo Bazán about desire, jealousy, honor and disappointment. The tales range from tiny fables about love as a creature to dramas of marriage, memory and fate.
Are the stories in Tales of Love true?
Some are drawn from real events, as the author says in her preface. Others borrow ideas from friends, old devotional books and other writers. She adapted them, and some are her own invention.
Who wrote Tales of Love and when?
Emilia Pardo Bazán writes the stories. Her preface mentions newspaper publication for several tales and says she has written hundreds of stories, but gives no date for the collection.
The author
Emilia Pardo Bazán
1851–1921 · Spanish novelist and essayist
Emilia Pardo Bazán was a Spanish novelist, short-story writer and editor. She was born in A Coruña in 1851 and died in Madrid in 1921. She wrote The House of Ulloa, published in 1886, and Mother Nature, published in 1887. She lived in Galicia and Madrid.
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