Description
Book SynopsisMachado de Assis’s iconic novel, now considered a progenitor of twentieth-century South American fiction, is finally rendered as a stunningly modern work.
Trade Review"The most modern, most startlingly avant-garde novel I read this year was originally published in 1881. Jull Costa and Patterson offer a peerless translation of this comic masterpiece, narrated from beyond the grave by a feckless, pretentious, impossibly winning aristocrat. The Brazilian novelist Machado was besotted with the license afforded by fiction and the social critique permitted only by comedy. Read this witty, wildly inventive work and how conservative, how painfully corseted so much modern fiction will suddenly seem." -- Parul Sehgal, 'Times Critics' Top Books of 2020' - The New York Times
"One of the wittiest, most playful, and therefore most alive and ageless books ever written." -- Dave Eggers
"The book’s invigorating style, as much as its backdrop of racial and social injustice, makes it ideal reading for this morbid, insurgent summer... Sprinkled with epigrams, dreams, gags and asides, the story teases, dances and delights... [Machado']s worldly, bruised voice reaches out to touch readers today with its rueful comedy and wry sensuality." -- The Economist
"A great ironist, a tragic comedian... In [De Assis] books, in their most comic moments, he underlines the suffering by making us laugh." -- Philip Roth
"The greatest writer ever produced in Latin America." -- Susan Sontag
