La desheredada

A vivid portrait of Madrid in the early 1870s opens the novel, where a frantic politician’s rant about money, votes and a crumbling constitution sets a tone of sharp satire. Through a chorus of absurd speeches and grotesque physical descriptions, the author sketches a society that has forgotten the basic “medicine” of arithmetic, logic, morality and common sense. The narrative is framed as a dedication to true healers – the schoolteachers – whose work the story suggests could restore the nation’s health.

Within this chaotic backdrop we meet Isidora Rufete, a determined young woman caught between family obligations and the oppressive expectations of a rigid social order. Her brother Mariano, a struggling student of medicine, and a host of aristocrats, bureaucrats, and street‑wise ragamuffins swirl around her, each embodying a different facet of the era’s moral decay. As their lives intersect in a cramped courtyard full of pretensions and whispered conspiracies, the novel explores the clash between ambition, duty and the yearning for genuine education.