Customer Reviews

Three-Cornered Hat (Everyman's Library (Paper))

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This book is like a comedy of errors told as a short novel. It is about a very happy couple, a miller and his beautiful wife, who live in a pretty mill-house in Andalusia, Southern Spain, in the early 1800's. Everybody in town has a crush with the miller's wife, including the town's principal political figure, a disgusting, lascivious old man. When this man tries to seduce the woman, all hell breaks loose in a crazy tale of mistaken identities, nocturnal escapades, horseriding and farce. It is a very easy to read book and it will give you a couple of hours of good-written entertainment, just like if you had gone to the movies, only here you get to decide the faces, places and color of everything.

The Three Cornered Hat is an amusing tale of mistaken identities and moral folkways in the Spain of early 1800's. Though the plot is not an entirely original one (the reader can recall similar stories such as Chaucer's Reeve's Tale), the story is written in an original way, describing the Andalucian countryside and colorful examples of local characters.

Alarcón is an author unknown in most of the world outside of Spain, but I recommend the book as an easily readable and largely enjoyable example of his work.