Dave Ross

All posts tagged Machado de Assis

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (21 June 1839 – 29 September 1908), was a pioneer Brazilian novelist, poet, playwright and short story writer, widely regarded as the greatest writer of Brazilian literature. In 1897, he founded and became the first President of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. He was multilingual, having taught himself French, English, German and Greek later in life.

The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas

Bras Cubas is one of the weirdest books I’ve read in a while and it doesn’t feel like it was written in the 19th century. Published in 1881, the novel has a unique style of short, erratic chapters shifting in tone and style. Instead of the clear and logical construction of a normal nineteenth-century realist novel, The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (full title) makes use of surreal devices of metaphor and playful narrative construction. It is considered the first...

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