Customer Reviews

Zalacain the Adventurer

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Zalacain is a man born in the tiny Basque village of Urbia, in Northern Spain. It is a very beautiful place (and the book makes you yearn to go visit it), but Zalacain is born a poor fellow. He is a tough, brave young boy who then is orphaned and adopted by a great-uncle, rude and drunkard but also brave and smart. He teaches Zalacain to work hard and be clever, and after his death Zalacain gets better and better at his many businesses, of which the most prominent is smuggling things from France. Raging in Spain is a civil war, the Carlista war, and Zalacain learns to play with both parts to his advantage. He lives many adventures on the road along with his faithful, smart companion, who will marry his sister. Zalacain marries the daughter of the local rich family, whose brother ardently hates Zalacain since childhood. At some point in the story, Zalacain gets deeply involved in the war, which causes him a lot of trouble and new adventures, including jail, escape, and the kidnapping of a nun in order to save his girlfriend from a convent. Through his adventures, Zalacain manages to get the attention and love of a good many girls, but he always stays faithful to his, first, girlfriend then wife. By the end of the war, Zalacain will meet his destiny.

This is simply a gem of a book. It's short and it moves very quickly in brief episodes. It's a tale about a brave, smart man living in dangerous times. Zalacain is good but he's far from being a saint. After all, he's a smuggler and a tough man ready to use his fists and knife. He is cunning and of quick mind. The rest of the characters are very well developed, in spite of the brevity of the book. It's not a moralizaing tale, by any means. It's pure fun, pure storytelling at its best. How good was the time when great literature could produce big, heavy, philosophical books but also simple stories about common yet uncommon people having to make a living in a difficult age. What shines through in this book is the value of everyday braveness, intelligence, allegiance to values, faithfulness and audacity.