Machado de Assis Books

First published in 1899, Dom Casmurro is acknowledged as the finest achievement of the great Brazilian novelist Machado de Assis, and among the most important novels ever written in the Portuguese language.

A vibrant new translation of Machado de Assis's classic novel about a young man flush with newfound wealth, who promptly gets swindled

Machado de Assis (1839-1908) is the great Brazilian author of Philosopher or Dog? and Epitaph of a Small Winner, whose work is admired by writers as different as Salman Rushdie, Carlos Fuentes, Woody Allen and Susan Sontag. Taken from his mature period, these dazzling stories echo Poe and Gogol, anticipate Joyce, and have been compared to the writing of Chekhov, Maupassant and Henry James, yet his modern sensibility and clear-eyed humour remain utterly unique.

'If Borges is the writer who made Garcia Marquez possible then it is no exaggeration to say that Machado De Assis is the writer who made Borges possible' - Salman Rushdie

"A revelatory new translation of the playful, incomparable masterpiece of one of the greatest black authors in the Americas. The 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 Ginsburg, 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, in 160 brief chapters, 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 utterly unforgettable, it is a novel ahead of its time that has been compared to the work of everyone from Cervantes to Sterne to Borges to Joyce to Nabokov to Calvino, and that has influenced generations of writers around the world. This new English translation is the first to include extensive notes providing crucial historical and cultural context and also includes excerpts from previous versions of the novel never before published in English"-- Provided by publisher

Accompanied by a thorough introduction to Brazil's Machado, Machado's Brazil, these vibrant new translations of eight of Machado de Assis's best-known short stories bring nineteenth-century Brazilian society and culture to life for modern readers.

«Der großartigste lateinamerikanische Autor aller Zeiten.» Susan Sontag Was wäre geschehen, hätte nicht Jesus die Bergpredigt gehalten, sondern der Teufel? Was, wenn Männer und Frauen ihre Seelen und Rollen tauschten? Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, berühmtester Klassiker Brasiliens und Vorbote des Magischen Realismus, stellt in seinen Erzählungen ironisch alle Konventionen auf den Kopf. Lustvoll spielt er mit den Erwartungen seiner Leser und lotet Grenzen aus: von Gut und Böse, Vernunft und Wahnsinn, bürgerlichem Schein und Sein. Dieser Auswahlband versammelt Machado de Assis' beste Geschichten – allesamt Neu- und deutsche Erstübersetzungen – zu einem Panorama kompromissloser Originalität.

Die nachträglichen Memoiren des Bras Cubas sind ein originelles, radikal skeptisches Werk, das mit Witz und Geist begeistert. Der Protagonist, ein liebenswerter Querkopf, reflektiert sein Leben aus dem Jenseits und thematisiert mit satirischem Humor die Wirrnisse menschlicher Beziehungen. Ein amüsanter Schelmenstreich voller Komik und Tragik.