Machado de Assis: 26 Stories

by Michael Wood (Author), Margaret Jull Costa (Author), Joaquim Maria M De Assis (Author), Michael Wood (Author), Margaret Jull Costa (Author), Michael Wood (Author), Robin Patterson (Author), Margaret Jull Costa (Author)

New
Paperback
2019
$16.05

Widely acclaimed as the greatest writer ever produced in Latin America (Susan Sontag), as well as another Kafka (Allen Ginsberg), Machado de Assis (1839-1908) was famous in his time for his psychologically probing tales of fin-de-siecle Rio de Janeiro-a world populated with dissolute plutocrats, grasping parvenus, and struggling spinsters. In this original paperback, Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson, the accomplished duo (Wall Street Journal) behind the landmark . . . heroically translated volume (The New Yorker) of the Collected Stories of Machado de Assis, include twenty-six chronologically ordered stories from the seven story collections published during Machado's life-featuring all-time favorites such as the celebrated novella The Alienist ; the tragicomic parable of bureaucracy, madness, and power (Los Angeles Review of Books), Midnight Mass ; The Cane ; and Father Against Mother. Ultimately, Machado de Assis: 26 Stories affirms Machado's status as a literary giant who must finally be fully integrated into the world literary canon.

Synopsis

Widely acclaimed as the greatest writer ever produced in Latin America (Susan Sontag), as well as another Kafka (Allen Ginsberg), Machado de Assis (1839-1908) was famous in his time for his psychologically probing tales of fin-de-siecle Rio de Janeiro-a world populated with dissolute plutocrats, grasping parvenus, and struggling spinsters. In this original paperback, Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson, the accomplished duo (Wall Street Journal) behind the landmark . . . heroically translated volume (The New Yorker) of the Collected Stories of Machado de Assis, include twenty-six chronologically ordered stories from the seven story collections published during Machado's life-featuring all-time favorites such as the celebrated novella The Alienist ; the tragicomic parable of bureaucracy, madness, and power (Los Angeles Review of Books), Midnight Mass ; The Cane ; and Father Against Mother. Ultimately, Machado de Assis: 26 Stories affirms Machado's status as a literary giant who must finally be fully integrated into the world literary canon.

$16.05

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2 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 320
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 11 Jun 2019
ISBN 10: 1631495984
ISBN 13: 9781631495984

Media Reviews

The greatest writer ever produced in Latin America.--Susan Sontag
A great ironist, a tragic comedian. . . . In his books, in their most comic moments, he underlines the suffering by making us laugh.--Philip Roth
Another Kafka.--Allen Ginsberg
The supreme black literary artist to date.--Harold Bloom
A welcome omnibus edition of short fiction by the writer widely considered the greatest to have come out of Brazil.... Sometimes Machado de Assis reads like a European modernist ('On that day--sometime around 2222, I imagine--the paradox will take off its wings and put on the thick coat of common truth'), at others like the contemporary of Melville and Flaubert that he was ('I succumbed to the morbid pleasure of tormenting myself, for no good reason'). In whatever regard, this collection offers plenty of evidence for why he enjoys the reputation he does, a pioneer of moods and modes that include fables, thin satires, and even gothic romances. Essential to students of Latin American and world literature.--Kirkus Reviews [Starred Review]
A major literary event... One of the pleasures of reading Machado is to encounter this comedy of detail, of human particulars... There is a worldly hunger in Machado's writing, an openness to both life and art.... For Machado, literature begets more literature. He delights in playing with form and narrative; in this volume there are stories written as lectures, stories written entirely in dialogue, and stories in which literary theory itself is mocked.--Morten H i Jensen, Los Angeles Review of Books

Author Bio

Machado De Assis, the grandson of ex-slaves, was born in Rio de Janeiro and wrote Philosopher or Dog?, among other novels and short-story collections. MARGARET JULL COSTA is a three-time winner of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. For New Directions, she has translated works by Rafael Chirbes, Javier Marias, Fernando Pessoa, Eca de Queiros, and Enrique Vila-Matas. Robin Patterson has translated Luandino Vieira and lives in England.