Doña Bárbara
Rómulo Gallegos
 Santos Luzardo, a graduate lawyer of the Central University of Venezuela, returns to his father's land in the plains of Apure to sell the land but desists when he discovers that it is controlled by a despotic woman, Doña Bárbara, also known as the men's devourer; it is said that she uses seduction and pacts with demonic spirits to satisfy her whims and achieve power. Santos Luzardo meets his cousin Lorenzo Barquero and discovers that he was a victim of the femme fatale, who left him bankrupt and a daughter, Marisela, whom she abandoned and who became quickly a vagrant. Lorenzo lives in poverty in a miserable house consumed by his own constant drunkenness. Doña Bárbara falls in love with Santos Luzardo but he is charmed by Marisela, no longer living in abandonment and taken under Luzardo’s care. The novel ends with the “defeat” of Doña Bárbara, who is able to obtain neither the land nor Luzardo’s heart, and finally departs to an unknown location.