El espejo de la muerte: Cuentos cortos

About this book

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.