Lazarillo de Tormes and the picaresque novel (Part 2)

The fact that the book had three editions printed within its first year already indicates what a great commercial success it was. In Amberes, 1555, a second part was published; this time, Lázaro transforms into a fish temporarily, and he enjoys a series of submarine adventures. It was a strange mixture, so strange that it could possibly have an allegorical meaning. Those two pieces were doomed by the prohibitory index of the 1559 Inquisition. In 1573 emerged an expurgated version by the title Lazarillo de Tormes punished, where all the jokes and the agnostic scenes were deleted, this was printed several times during the XVI and XVII centuries. The original piece was printed outside of Spain several times, but it wasn’t until the XIX century when it was printed again inside the country. The book was very popular in Europe: by 1560, it was translated into French, and it also was translated three more times in the following century.