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.
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 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.
Dave Eggers 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.