An NYRB Classics Original <br> <br> The tale of a high-spirited, ambitious young woman or man breaking free from stifling provincial constraints to pursue a life of independence is a staple of the novel. In <i>Tristana</i> the great Spanish novelist Benito Pe´rez Galdo´s disconcertingly reverses the formula. His beautiful and brilliant and very winning heroine breaks free from a perverse and imprisoning relationship to a womanizing older man, supposed by all to be her father. But after a terrible stroke of misfortune, she retreats—either out of timidity or, perhaps, simply because confinement has its own seductive power.<br><i><br>Tristana</i>, here in an exceptionally fine and fluent new English rendering by Margaret Jull Costa, is an unequaled exploration of the tragedy of human desire.