The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas

A revelatory new translation of the playful, incomparable masterpiece of one of the greatest Black authors in the Americas Machado de Assis is not only Brazil's most celebrated writer but also a writer of world stature. In his masterpiece, the 1881 novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (also translated 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 half-hearted political ambitions, serves up hare-brained 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 works by Cervantes, Sterne, Joyce, Nabokov, Borges and Calvino, and has influenced generations of writers around the world.

About the Author :
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), the mixed-race grandson of freed slaves, was born in Rio de Janeiro. Largely self-taught, he wrote many novels, stories, plays, and poems, eventually becoming the first President of the Brazilian Academy of Letters and gaining recognition as Brazil's greatest writer. Flora Thomson-DeVeaux (translator/introducer) is a translator, writer, and researcher who studied Spanish and Portuguese at Princeton University and earned a PhD in Portuguese and Brazilian studies from Brown University. She lives in Rio de Janeiro, where she is the research director of the podcast series Radio Novelo. Dave Eggers (foreword) is the bestselling author of more than ten books, including A Hologram for the King, a finalist for the National Book Award; What Is the What, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His work has been translated into more than forty languages, and his nonfiction and journalism have appeared The New Yorker, The Best American Travel Writing, and The Best American Essays. The founder of McSweeney's, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Eggers lives in Northern California with his family.

Review :
A glittering masterwork and an unmitigated joy to read . . . It is wholly original and unlike anything other than the many books that came after it and seem to have knowingly or not borrowed from it. . . . This translation is a glorious gift to the world, because it sparkles, because it sings, because it's very funny and manages to capture Machado's inimitable tone, at once mordant and wistful, self-lacerating and romantic A writer a hundred years ahead of his time . . . If Borges is the writer who made García Márquez possible, then it is no exaggeration to say that Machado de Assis is the writer who made Borges possible One of those thrillingly original, radically skeptical books that will always impress readers with the force of private discovery Is it possible that the most modern, most startlingly avant-garde novel to appear this year was originally published in 1881? . . . Machado's book represents the moment when the novel learned to dance. . . . Flora Thomson-DeVeaux's edition is a gift to scholars . . . [Brás Cubas is] superb company