Epitaph of a Small Winner - Softcover

Machado De Assis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0380017121 ISBN 13: 9780380017126

Publisher: Avon, 1978

Synopsis

â I am a deceased writer not in the sense of one who has written and is now deceased, but in the sense of one who had died and is now writing.â So begins the posthumous memoir of Braz Cubas, a wealthy nineteenth-century Brazilian. Though the grave has given Cubas the distance to examine his rather undistinguished life, it has not dampened his sense of humor. In the tradition of Laurence Sternâ s Tristram Shamdy, Epitaph of a Small Winner is one of the wittiest self-portraits in literary history.

About this title

About the Author:

Machado de Assis (1839-1908) is considered one of Brazil’s greatest novelists.

Review:

"Epitaph of a Small Winner is probably one of those thrillingly original, radically skeptical books that will always impress readers with the force of private discovery." —From the foreword by Susan Sontag

"Machado de Assis was a literary force, transcending nationality and language, comparable certainly to Flaubert, Hardy, or James...Epitaph of a Small Winner is clearly one of those books which we call definitive. It is there, complete, done: a study of ironic disillusionment couched in the most delicate suavity of despair..." —The New York Times Book Review

"No satirist, not even Swift, is less merciful in his exposure of the pretentiousness and the hypocrisy that lurk in the average good man and woman. Machado, in his deceptively amiable way, is terrifying." —The New Republic

"A masterpiece of Epicurean irony." —The New York Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Avon
• Publication date: 1978
• ISBN 10: 0380017121
• ISBN 13: 9780380017126
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 251