Quincas Borba

Joachim Maria Machado de Assis author Gregory Rabassa translator David T Haberly editor Celso Favaretto editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc

Published:2nd Sep '99

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

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Quincas Borba cover

Machado de Assis is considered the pre-eminent writer of Brazil. Quincas Borba is one of his four most important novels and features some of the same characters as Memorias Postumas de Bras Cubas. The main character of this novel is a well-meaning country fellow who moves to the city with his dog, Quincas Borba, named after the mad philosopher who was his previous owner. As the dog's new owner explores the social, political, and commercial world of the city, he also tries to come to grips with the motives that lie behind every human action and begins to ponder what madness really is. Despite the "heavy" messages behind this book, the narration is light-hearted, allowing readers to laugh both at the foibles of society and at themselves.

"In superbly funny books, [Machado] described the abnormalities of alienation, perversion, domination, cruelty and madness. He deconstructed empire with a thoroughness and an esthetic equilibrium that place him in a class by himself."--K. David Jackson, The New York Times Book Review "Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis...[is] a genuine subversive, bent on overturning convention but always with an air of leisurely nonchalance....Quincas Borba consolidates the triumph of a Latin American protomodernist."--Jonathan Keates, The New York Times Book Review "[A] spirited translation."--Jonathan Keates, The New York Times Book Review "A graceful new translation of a major novel by the master ironist who remains Brazil's greatest writer of fiction.... A great, teasing, profoundly entertaining book: An unforgettable portrayal of a materially oriented Don Quixote that's also that rariety in any literature--a genuine philosophical novel."--Kirkus

ISBN: 9780195106824

Dimensions: 141mm x 212mm x 20mm

Weight: 422g

320 pages