'One of the masterpieces of Brazilian literature The kind of humour that makes skulls smile' Salman Rushdie

'I am a deceased writer not in the sense of one who has written and is now deceased, but in the sense of one who has died and is now writing'. So begins the posthumous memoir of Braz Cubas, a wealthy nineteenth-century Brazilian. While the grave may have given Cubas the distance to examine his rather undistinguished life, it has certainly not dampened his sense of humour. Epitaph of a Small Winner is one of the wittiest self-portraits in literary history.

Details

ISBN13: 9780747599043
Format: Paperback / softback
Number of Pages: 240
Edition:
Publication Date:
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publication City, Country: London, United Kingdom
Dimensions (cm): 19.8(H)x12.9(L)x1.5(W)
Weight (gm):

Author Biography

Machado de Assis was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1839 and died in 1908. The author of numerous novels, including Dom Casmurro and Philosopher or Dog?, he is one of Latin America's most treasured writers.

Reviews

'Machado de Assis was a literary force, transcending nationality and language, comparable certainly to Flaubert, Hardy or James ... Epitaph of a Small Winner is clearly one of those books which we call definitive. It is there, complete, done: a study of ironic disillusionment couched in the most delicate suavity of despair' New York Times Book Review 'No satirist, not even Swift, is less merciful in his exposure of the pretentiousness and the hypocrisy that lurk in the average good man and woman. Machado, in his deceptively amiable way, is terrifying' New Republic 'A masterpiece of Epicurean irony' New York Times