Novel
Sister Saint Sulpice
La hermana San Sulpicio
Armando Palacio Valdés · 1889
Synopsis
Ceferino Sanjurjo, a Galician doctor, comes to take the waters at the spa of Marmolejo, in Andalusia. There he meets Gloria Bermúdez, a young nun known as Sister San Sulpicio, whose beauty, cheerfulness and voice charm him at once. Resolved to marry her, he follows her to Seville, where she lives in her convent, and discovers the city, its festivals, its families and its customs, which the book describes at length while the doctor pursues a conquest that everything makes difficult.
Context
The novel appeared in 1889 in two volumes, with the subtitle Costumbres andaluzas, and was translated into English the following year in New York. Its heroine comes from an earlier novel by the author, Maximina, where she was a novice. Florián Rey brought it to the screen twice, in 1927 and 1934, with Imperio Argentina; Luis Lucia made another version in 1952, with Carmen Sevilla, and a musical comedy was drawn from it in 1971.
Who it is for
A novel of Andalusian manners in two volumes, which combines a love story with long descriptions of Seville.
Prizes and reception
Its author's most famous work; translated into French under the title La Sœur Saint-Sulpice as early as 1903.