The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (Translated by Thomson-DeVeaux 2020)

{ NOV 2021 - Verified ebook for complete book description, cover, table of contents, separation of book (front/ back matter, parts, and chapters), and epub format error checking. } Paperback, 368 pages Published: 1881 Edition: Penguin Books (2020) Greatest Books (amalgamated list of best books) Translated from the Portuguese, introduction, and notes by: Flora Thomson-DeVeaux (2020) Foreword by: Dave Eggers Original title: "Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas" by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis A revelatory new translation of the playful, incomparable masterpiece of one of the greatest black authors in the Americas. One of two translations for 2020. The mixed-race grandson of ex-slaves, Machado de Assis is not only Brazil's most celebrated writer but also a writer of world stature, who has been championed by the likes of Philip Roth, Susan Sontag, Allen Ginsberg, John Updike, and Salman Rushdie. In his masterpiece, the 1881 novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (translated also 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, in 160 brief chapters, tells of his failed romances and halfhearted political ambitions, serves up harebrained 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 the work of everyone from Cervantes to Sterne to Joyce to Nabokov to Borges to Calvino, and has influenced generations of writers around the world. This new English translation is the first to include extensive notes providing crucial historical and cultural context and also includes excerpts from previous versions of the novel never before published in English. "One of the wittiest, most playful, and . . . most alive and ageless books ever written." —Dave Eggers, The New Yorker A revelatory new translation of the playful, incomparable masterpiece of one of the greatest Black authors in the Americas A Penguin Classic The mixed-race grandson of ex-slaves, Machado de Assis is not only Brazil's most celebrated writer but also a writer of world stature, who has been championed by the likes of Philip Roth, Susan Sontag, Allen Ginsberg, John Updike, and Salman Rushdie. In his masterpiece, the 1881 novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (translated also 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 halfhearted political ambitions, serves up harebrained 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 the work of everyone from Cervantes to Sterne to Joyce to Nabokov to Borges to Calvino, and has influenced generations of writers around the world. This new English translation is the first to include extensive notes providing crucial historical and cultural context. Unlike other editions, it also preserves Machado's original chapter breaks—each of the novel's 160 short chapters begins on a new page—and includes excerpts from previous versions of the novel never before published in English. For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. "Acclaimed translators Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson offer this new rendition of Machado de Assis' classic novel. When the Collected Stories of Machado de Assis was published in 2018, it was hailed as a "literary event" by the LARB and as "landmark... heroically translated" by Benjamin Moser of The New Yorker. Now the "accomplished duo," (Sam Sacks, WSJ) returns with a fresh translation of Machado's definitive work, The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas. First published in 1881, it marks a pivotal moment in the development of Machado's career as a writer, as his characteristic flights into the surreal and the absurd became his literary staples. The novel begins with Br�as Cubas recounting his own death-so, we quickly learn that these are not posthumous memoirs in the convention sense, but memoirs written, as it were, from the grave. It continues as absurdly as it begins, toggling effortlessly between literary, philosophical, historical, and sometimes wholly nonsensical digressions. He returns to his birth in 1805, and describes a childhood spent tormenting household slaves, succeeding and failing in love, finding friendship, obsessing over frivolities-a life of tedium and yet one that speaks to universal desires and aspirations. At the end of his life, he is proud of one thing: that he had no children to pass on his miserable legacy. Throughout, Bras Cubas' life is bolstered by the playfulness and black humor of Machado's prose, resulting in a work of uproarious mockery but also of great sympathy and melancholy-a tonal mix for which Machado is known and widely admired"-- Provided by publisher "A revelatory new translation of the playful, incomparable masterpiece of one of the greatest black authors in the Americas. The mixed-race grandson of ex-slaves, Machado de Assis is not only Brazil's most celebrated writer but also a writer of world stature, who has been championed by the likes of Philip Roth, Susan Sontag, Allen Ginsburg, John Updike, and Salman Rushdie. In his masterpiece, the 1881 novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (translated also 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, in 160 brief chapters, tells of his failed romances and halfhearted political ambitions, serves up harebrained philosophies, and complains with gusto from the depths of his grave. Wildly imaginative, wickedly witty, and utterly unforgettable, it is a novel ahead of its time that has been compared to the work of everyone from Cervantes to Sterne to Borges to Joyce to Nabokov to Calvino, and that has influenced generations of writers around the world. This new English translation is the first to include extensive notes providing crucial historical and cultural context and also includes excerpts from previous versions of the novel never before published in English"-- Provided by publisher **Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas** é um romance escrito por Machado de Assis, desenvolvido em princípio como folhetim, de março a dezembro de 1880, na Revista Brasileira, para, no ano seguinte, ser publicado como livro, pela então Tipografia Nacional como Memorias Posthumas de Braz Cubas. O livro tem como marcas um tom cáustico e novo estilo na obra de Machado de Assis, bem como audácia e inovação temática no cenário literário nacional, que o fez receber, à época, resenhas estranhadas. Confessando adotar a "forma livre" de Laurence Sterne em seu Tristram Shandy (1759–67), ou de Xavier de Maistre, em Memórias Póstumas rompe com a narração linear e objetivista de autores proeminentes da época, como Flaubert e Zola, para retratar o Rio de Janeiro e sua época em geral com pessimismo, ironia e indiferença — um dos fatores que fizeram com que fosse amplamente considerada a obra que iniciou o Realismo no Brasil, ainda que com elementos livres e próprios a Machado de Assis. — [Wikipedia](https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mem%C3%B3rias_P%C3%B3stumas_de_Br%C3%A1s_Cubas) (CC BY-SA 4.0)