Fans of Latin American literature will be thrilled by Oxford University Press's new translations of works by 19th-century Brazilian author Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. His novels are both heartbreaking and comic; his limning of a colonial Brazil in flux is both perceptive and remarkably modern. The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas is written as an autobiography, a chronicle of the erotic misadventures of its narrator, Brás Cubas--who happens to be dead. In pursuit of love and progeny, Cubas rejects the women who want him and aspires to the ones who reject him. In the end, he dies unloved and without heirs, yet he somehow manages to turn this bitter pill into a victory of sorts. What makes Memoirs stand up 100 years after the book was written is Machado's biting humor, brilliant prose, and profound understanding of all the vagaries of human behavior.


From Library Journal
A 19th-century classic of Brazilian literature, Machado de Assis's 1880 novel is written as a posthumously composed memoir (according to the fictional author Bras Cubas, a superior way of writing memoirs, since a dead writer can be frank about events). Bras Cubas's life is less interesting than the book's style and structure: 160 brief chapters in which Bras Cubas comments both on his life and the novel's composition. The fictional author was a politician, writer, and celebrity who has an affair with the wife of a friend. His sister wants him to marry a shy young woman, but she dies before the wedding. A school friend preaches the gospel of a new secular religion but never writes a long-anticipated book on the subject. Meanwhile, Bras Cubas is working on a poultice to relieve melancholy. With a masterful translation by Rabassa and a contextual foreword and afterword that tell us that the work anticipates Calvino and Garcia Marquez, this book is recommended for collections rich in Latin American and literary holdings. [This book is one of several new titles launching Oxford's "Library of Latin America" series, which will make available 40 works of fiction, poetry, history, and memoir that in most cases have never been translated into English.?Ed.]?Harold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib. of New Yor.-?Harold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib. of New YorkCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Book Description
"Be aware that frankness is the prime virtue of a dead man," writes the narrator of The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas. But while he may be dead, he is surely one of the liveliest characters in fiction, a product of one of the most remarkable imaginations in all of literature, Brazil's greatest novelist of the nineteenth century, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. By turns flippant and profound, The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas is the story of an unheroic man with half-hearted political ambitions, a harebrained idea for curing the world of melancholy, and a thousand quixotic theories unleashed from beyond the grave. It is a novel that has influenced generations of Latin American writers but remains refreshingly and unforgettably unlike anything written before or after it. Newly translated by Gregory Rabassa and superbly edited by Enylton de Sa Rego and Gilberto Pinheiro Passos, this Library of Latin America edition brings to English-speaking readers a literary delight of the highest order.


Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Portugese

ANNOTATION

"New translation of Machado's famous novel is for the most part faithful and readable. However, work has occasional odd errors and omissions, and fails to give sufficient attention to Machado's rhythm and syntax. Given Rabassa's vast experience as a translator, it is hard not to suspect that carelessness and haste explain the mistakes and lapses. Also poorly edited and inadequately proofread"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Famous in his lifetime and still revered throughout Latin America, Machado de Assis has remained little known in the English-speaking world. By turns flippant and profound, The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas is the story of an unheroic man with half-hearted political ambitions, a harebrained idea for curing the world of melancholy, and a thousand quixotic theories unleashed from beyond the grave. It is a novel that has influenced generations of Latin American writers but remains refreshingly and unforgettably unlike anything written before or after it.

FROM THE CRITICS

The Nation