Miaow - by Benito Perez Galdos (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A Dickensian tale of ambition, family, and financial ruin by the most important Spanish novelist after Cervantes, this tragicomic novel about a patriarch struggling to keep his ungrateful family from ruin is at turns scathing and hilarious.

Ramón Villaamil has been a loyal civil servant his whole life, but a change in government leaves him out of a job and still two months short of qualifying for his pension. Initially optimistic that he'll be able to find work and pull his family out of their financial straits, he spends his days visiting the administration, pestering his ex-colleagues to put in a good word for him, and begging his friends in high places for money. At home, Villaamil's wife, daughter, and sister-in-law--whose feline appearances earn them the nickname "the Miaows"--are unimpressed by Villaamil's failures, and the only joy left in Villaamil's life is his young grandson Luis. When Luis's disgraced father, the handsome and dastardly Víctor Cadalso, reappears in their lives with promises of easing their financial burdens, Villaamil has no choice but to allow him back into their midst, even as he knows there is nothing pure about Víctor's intentions and his return might spell their ruin.

Benito Pérez Galdós's satire of middle-class life bears comparison with the novels of Charles Dickens and Honoré de Balzac, serving up a scathing critique of the hypocrisy and corruption of nineteenth-century Spanish society and the dehumanizing rituals of work. Margaret Jull Costa's new translation brings out the tragedy, the comedy, and the vitality of Pérez Galdós's prose.

Review Quotes

"If Zola is the Wagner of nineteenth-century realism (and George Eliot perhaps its Brahms), then Benito Pérez Galdós is its Shakespeare, or at least the Shakespeare of the late comedies and romances. . . . His Madrid is as full of mystery as Balzac's Paris."--Frederic Jameson

About the Author

Benito Pérez Galdós (1843-1920) is considered the greatest Spanish writer after Cervantes. In a career that spanned more than forty years, Galdós wrote nearly eighty novels and some twenty plays. Tristana, also available as an NYRB Classic, and other books of his were adapted for the screen by the great surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel.

Margaret Jull Costa has translated the works of many Spanish and Portuguese writers, including Javier Marías, José Saramago, Eça de Queirós, Fernando Pessoa, Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, and César Vallejo. Her translations have won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize, and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, among others. in 2014, she was awarded an OBE for services to literature and, in 2018, the Ordem do Infante D. Henrique from the Portuguese government and a Lifetime Award for Excellence in Translation from the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute, New York.