"One of the wittiest, most playful, and . . . most alive and ageless books ever written." --Dave Eggers, The New Yorker\nA revelatory new translation of the playful, incomparable masterpiece of one of the greatest Black authors in the Americas\nA Penguin Classic\nThe mixed-race grandson of ex-slaves, Machado de Assis is not only Brazil's most celebrated writer but also a writer of world stature, who has been championed by the likes of Philip Roth, Susan Sontag, Allen Ginsberg, John Updike, and Salman Rushdie. In his masterpiece, the 1881 novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (translated also as Epitaph of a Small Winner), the ghost of a decadent and disagreeable aristocrat decides to write his memoir. He dedicates it to the worms gnawing at his corpse and tells of his failed romances and halfhearted political ambitions, serves up harebrained philosophies, and complains with gusto from the depths of his grave. Wildly imaginative, wickedly witty, and ahead of its time, the novel has been compared to the work of everyone from Cervantes to Sterne to Joyce to Nabokov to Borges to Calvino, and has influenced generations of writers around the world.\nThis new English translation is the first to include extensive notes providing crucial historical and cultural context. Unlike other editions, it also preserves Machado's original chapter breaks--each of the novel's 160 short chapters begins on a new page--and includes excerpts from previous versions of the novel never before published in English.\nFor more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas

Literature & Fiction

Machado De Assis, Joaquim Maria

United States

Penguin Classics

"Be aware that frankness is the prime virtue of a dead man," writes the narrator of The Posthumous Memoirs of Br�s Cubas. But while he may be dead, he is surely one of the liveliest characters in fiction, a product of one of the most remarkable imaginations in all of literature, Brazil's greatest novelist of the nineteenth century, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. By turns flippant and profound, The Posthumous Memoirs of Br�s Cubas is the story of an unheroic man with half-hearted political ambitions, a harebrained idea for curing the world of melancholy, and a thousand quixotic theories unleashed from beyond the grave. It is a novel that has influenced generations of Latin American writers but remains refreshingly and unforgettably unlike anything written before or after it. Newly translated by Gregory Rabassa and superbly edited by Enylton de S� Rego and Gilberto Pinheiro Passos, this Library of Latin America edition brings to English-speaking readers a literary delight of the highest order.

The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (Library of Latin America)

Rabassa, Gregory

Oxford University Press

Esau and Jacob (Library of Latin America)

Esau and Jacob is the last of Machado de Assis's four great novels. At one level it is the story of twin brothers in love with the same woman and her inability to choose between them. At another level, it is the story of Brazil itself, caught between the traditional and the modern, and between the monarchical and republican ideals. Instead of a heroic biblical fable, Machado de Assis gives us a story of the petty squabbles, conflicting ambitions, doubts, and insecurities that are part of the human condition.

Lowe, Elizabeth

The modem Brazilian short story begins with the mature work of Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), acclaimed almost unanimously as Brazil's greatest writer. Collectively, these nineteen stories are representative of Machado's unique style and world view, and this translation doubles the number of his stories previously available in English. The stories in this volume reflect Machado's post-1880 emphasis on social satire and experimentation in psychological realism. If he had continued to produce the moralistic love stories and parlor intrigues of his earlier fiction, Machado's legacy would have been an entertaining but inconsequent body of work. However, by 1880 he had begun a devastating satirical assault on society through his fiction. In spite of his ruthlessness, Machado does at times reveal an ironic sympathy for his characters. He is not indifferent to human conflict but uses humor and irony to stress the absurdity of these conflicts, acted out against the backdrop of an indifferent universe. Such a spectacle creates a sense of helplessness that can only inspire wistful amusement. In his technical mastery of the short story. Machado was decades ahead of his contemporaries and can still be considered more modern than most of the modernists themselves. That his stories elicit such strong and diverse reactions today is a tribute to their richness, complexity, and significance.

The Devil's Church and Other Stories (Texas Pan American Series)

Reference

University of Texas Press

The Devil's Church and Other Stories

Short Stories & Anthologies

Quincas Borba, rich eccentric philosopher and leading man in Epitaph Of A Small Winner, has named his dog Quincas Borba, because - as he explains to his friend Rubiao - Quincas the man is going to die first. And though he may be immortalized in history for his famous philosophy, he will also be remembered by the illiterates through his dog. Quincas the man does die first, leaving his fortune to Rubiao, provided that he take care of the dog. Rubiao, heretofore a not-too-bright teacher, suddenly becomes a wealthy man, with stocks and homes and investments and servants. But Rubiao is hardly the world cosmopolitan type. And when he forsakes his hometown of Barbacena for Quinca's mansion in Rio, he's in for a whole new world of experiences - including insanity.

Philosopher or Dog?

Literary

Avon: Bard

The Psychiatrist and other stories:

The Psychiatrist, and Other Stories.

University of California Press

The hand & the glove (Studies in Romance languages)

World Literature

University Press of Kentucky

One of the greatest novels of Brazilian Literature, Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas is narrated by a dead man who recounts the amorous misadventures of his unheroic life and explains his half-hearted political ambitions. While it is considered the first novel of Brazilian realism, its quirks seem refreshingly modern and make it unforgettably unlike anything written before or after it.

Memorias Postumas de Bras Cubas (Classicos da Literatura Brasileira) (Portuguese Edition)

Luso-Brazilian Books

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Books by Machado De Assis, Joaquim Maria

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The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas

The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (Library of Latin America)

Esau and Jacob (Library of Latin America)

Esau and Jacob (Library of Latin America)

The Devil's Church and Other Stories (Texas Pan American Series)

The Devil's Church and Other Stories

Philosopher or Dog?

The Psychiatrist, and Other Stories.

The hand & the glove (Studies in Romance languages)

Memorias Postumas de Bras Cubas (Classicos da Literatura Brasileira) (Portuguese Edition)