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In this English edition designed for either classroom use or performance, Robert Fedorchek presents a readable translation faithful to the tone and spirit of the original.

Juanita la Larga (1896), the third of Juan Valera's eponymous novels with a female protagonist, unfolds in a small town in nineteenth-century Spain and tells the story of a young girl's romance with a wealthy widower many years her senior.

The great nineteenth-century Portuguese author José Maria Eça de Queirós (1845-1900) has long been known for his novels, especially The Crime of Father Amaro (1880) and The Maias (1888). However, he also wrote short stories, and a number of them, having stood the test of time, are now regarded as masterpieces. Although there is no question that Eça owes the lion’s share of his reputation to his long fiction, the tales in this collection tell us that we are reading the work of a writer in full control of both genres. The eleven selections range widely in theme and length and, except for “The Catastrophe”(which was published posthumously), are arranged in order of the year of publication. “The Falling Snow” and “Master Devil” contain elements of both the fantastic and realistic, a number of which call to mind Edgar Allan Poe, a writer whom Eça read and greatly admired. The power of love becomes the obsession of love in “The Peculiarities of a Blonde Girl” and “José Matias,” two of the stories that stand at the pinnacle of Eça’s reputation as a short story writer. “Civilization” will speak to nostalgia for a rustic life, while “Perfection” searches, through Ulysses and a special goddess, into a different kind of life, one without blemish. Other tales explore the nature of sacrifice (“The Wet Nurse”), greed and betrayal (“The Treasure”), jealousy and vengeance (“The Dead Man”), and faith in a young rabbi named Jesus (“The Gentle Miracle”). No one knows why Eça withheld publication of “The Catastrophe,” but this powerful story engages us with its naked intensity, its aroused passion, and its blunt honesty, for it amounts to a ringing endorsement of the exalted meaning of patriotism.

Translated from the Spanish by Robert M. Fedorchek with an introduction by Agnes Moncy

The Relic tells the story of an orphaned young man, Teodorico Raposo, who is brought to Lisbon from a provincial town in Portugal to live with his aunt, a rigid, stern—and oftentimes—forbidding Catholic. Her devout circle of acquaintances is made up almost entirely of priests, many of whom are more concerned with appearances than spirituality, and seeking her and their approval, Teodorico is driven to attend Mass, say rosaries, and frequent churches, all the while awakening to sensuality, women, and the material life in conflict with “Auntie’s” devotions, which are—inwardly—devoid of the charity preached by Christ. When Teodorico obtains a degree from the University of Coimbra, Auntie sends him to the Holy Land to search for a relic to cure her ills. He meets up with a learned German author and, after a sojourn to Egypt, the two make their way to the land trod by Jesus. It is there that Teodorico has the dream that takes up nearly one third of the novel: he witnesses the travails that lead to the Passion and Crucifixion, as well as the aftermath of Christ’s death. Faced now with his mission, Teodorico embarks on a search. He soon comes upon an item, a “true” relic authenticated by his German friend, the sanctity of which will send Auntie to the heights of spiritual bliss, so much so that she will make him her heir. But when Teodorico returns to Lisbon with it, deception awaits her as the result of a simple mistake that had been made, and disinheritance awaits him as a result of Auntie’s anger and vindictiveness.