No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopyingt recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Oxford University Press Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris Sao Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in BerlinĬopyright © 1997 by Oxford University Press First Published by Oxford University Press, Inc., 1997 First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1998 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. LIBRARY OF LATIN AMERICA General Editor Jean Franco Series Editor for Brazil Richard Graham, with the assistance of Alfredo Bosi Editorial Board Antonio Cornejo Polar Tulio Halperin Donghi Ivan jaksic Naomi Lindstrom Eduardo Lozano Francine MasielloĪ Novel by JOAQUIM MARIA MACHADO DE ASSIS Translated from the Portuguese by GREGORY RABASSA WITH A FOREWORD BY ENYLTON DE SA REGO AND AN AFTERWORD BY GILBERTO PINHEIRO PASSOS Newly translated by Gregory Rabassa and superbly edited by Enylton de S? Rego and Gilberto Pinheiro Passos, this Library of Latin America edition brings to English-speaking readers a literary delight of the highest order.

It is a novel that has influenced generations of Latin American writers but remains refreshingly and unforgettably unlike anything written before or after it. By turns flippant and profound, The Posthumous Memoirs of Br?s 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.

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. 'Be aware that frankness is the prime virtue of a dead man,' writes the narrator of The Posthumous Memoirs of Br?s Cubas.

The posthumous memoirs of bras cubás