The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes and of His Fortunes and Adversities (Spanish: La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus fortunas y adversidades [la ˈβiða ðe laθaˈɾiʎo ðe ˈtoɾmes i ðe sus foɾˈtunas jaðβeɾsiˈðaðes]) is a Spanish novella, published anonymously because of its anticlerical content. The oldest editions were published in 1554 in four locations: Alcalá de Henares, Burgos, and Medina del Campo in Spain and Antwerp in the Spanish Netherlands. It is assumed that they were not the original edition of the novella, since scholars believe that a now-lost original may have preceded them. The Alcalá de Henares edition adds some episodes that a second author most likely wrote. Lazarillo de Tormes is the first book establishing the style of the picaresque satirical novel.

Lázaro is a boy of humble origins from Salamanca. After his stepfather is accused of thievery, his mother asks a wily blind beggar to take on Lazarillo (little Lázaro) as his apprentice. Lázaro develops his cunning while serving the blind beggar and several other masters, and also learns to take up his father's practice.

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Besides its importance in the Spanish literature of the Golden Age, Lazarillo de Tormes is credited with founding a literary genre, the picaresque novel, from the Spanish word pícaro, meaning "rogue" or "rascal." In novels of this type, the adventures of the pícaro expose injustice while amusing the reader. This extensive genre includes Cervantes' Rinconete y Cortadillo and El coloquio de los perros, Henry Fielding's Tom Jones and Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Its influence extends to twentieth-century novels, dramas, and films featuring the "anti-hero".

Lazarillo de Tormes was banned by the Spanish Crown and included in the Index of Forbidden Books of the Spanish Inquisition; this was at least in part due to the book's anti-clerical flavor. In 1573, the Crown allowed the circulation of a version which omitted Chapters 4 and 5 and assorted paragraphs from other parts of the book. An unabridged version did not appear in Spain until the nineteenth century. It was the Antwerp version that circulated throughout Europe, translated into French (1560), English (1576), Dutch (after the northern, largely Protestant Seven Provinces of the Low Countries revolted against Spain in 1579), German (1617), and Italian (1622).

The primary objections to Lazarillo had to do with its vivid and realistic descriptions of the world of the pauper and the petty thief. The "worm's eye view" of society contrasted sharply with the more conventional literary focus on superhuman exploits recounted in chivalric romances such as the hugely popular Amadís de Gaula. In Antwerp, it followed the tradition of the impudent trickster figure Till Eulenspiegel.

Lazarillo introduced the picaresque device of delineating various professions and levels of society. A young man or woman describes masters or "betters" with ingenuously presented realistic details. But Lazarillo speaks of "the blind man," "the squire," "the pardoner," presenting these characters as types.

Significantly, the only named characters are Lazarillo and his family: his mother Antona Pérez, his father Tomé Gonzáles, and his stepfather El Zayde. The surname de Tormes comes from the river Tormes. In the narrative, Lazarillo explains that his father ran a mill on the river, where he was literally born on the river. The Tormes runs through Lazarillo's hometown, Tejares, a then small village, now a neighborhood in Salamanca, a Castilian-Leonese university city. (There is an old mill on the river, and a statue of Lazarillo and the blind man next to the Roman bridge [puente romano] in the city.)