El espejo de la muerte by Miguel de Unamuno is a collection of short stories written in the early 20th century. The volume gathers brief, realist-philosophical tales about ordinary people confronting love, death, chance, and faith. Expect intimate portraits—from a withering village girl and a simple bachelor who adopts a foundling to a disinherited suicide and other humble figures—told with compassion, irony, and existential bite.The opening of the collection unfolds a suite of vignettes: a young woman, Matilde, wastes away as her fiancé drifts off and she dies soon after a pilgrimage; a gentle hunter–card player finds a baby at his door, hires a nodriza, and ends up marrying her as they raise a large family; Ramón Nonnato, crushed by his usurer father’s legacy, liquidates the last assets and shoots himself; an old wanderer and a runaway girl become each other’s family until a lover’s song calls her away and he dies blessedly; a love-starved traveler and a woman lock eyes in a station, recognize an overwhelming destiny, and are found dead together—no suicide, simply hearts undone; a Bilbao shopkeeper nicknamed Solitaña lives a damp, devout routine and dies murmuring the litany; Bonifacio, obsessed with originality, never finds himself—unless, in one version, fatherhood makes him whole; and the final fragment begins with little Susín building muddy fortifications as the scene cuts off. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
These books are free to read. Each is in the public domain in the United States; check your own country's rules before you copy or share one.
