Guzmán de Alfarache is a picaresque novel written by Mateo Alemán. The works tells the first person adventures of a picaro, a young street urchin, as he matures into adulthood. It thus ultimately both recounts adventures and moralizes on those childish excesses. Guzmán de Alfarache, by this means, is conceived as an extensive doctrinal sermon about the sins of society, and was so received by the author's contemporaries, despite the hybrid qualities between an engaging novel and a moralizing discourse. The novel was highly popular in its time. Many editions were published, not only in Spanish, but in French, German, English, Italian, and Latin.
