{"id":58514,"date":"2019-07-16T01:10:11","date_gmt":"2019-07-16T01:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=58514"},"modified":"2019-07-16T01:29:25","modified_gmt":"2019-07-16T01:29:25","slug":"58514","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=58514","title":{"rendered":"The Collected Stories of Machado de Assis"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Collected Stories of Machado de Assis<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

W. W. Norton<\/a>
\nJune 2018
\n960 pages
\n6.6 x 9.6 in
\nHardcover ISBN: 978-0-87140-496-1<\/p>\n

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis<\/a> <\/strong>(1839-1908)<\/p>\n

Translated by: Robin Patterson<\/strong> and Margaret Jull Costa<\/strong><\/p>\n

Foreword by: Michael Wood<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

New York Times Critics\u2019 Best of the Year<\/strong><\/p>\n

A landmark event, the complete stories of Machado de Assis finally appear in English for the first time in this extraordinary new translation.<\/em><\/p>\n

Widely acclaimed as the progenitor of twentieth-century Latin American fiction, Machado de Assis (1839\u20131908)\u2014the son of a mulatto<\/a> father and a washerwoman, and the grandson of freed slaves\u2014was hailed in his lifetime as Brazil\u2019s<\/a> greatest writer. His prodigious output of novels, plays, and stories rivaled contemporaries like Chekhov<\/a>, Flaubert<\/a>, and Maupassant<\/a>, but, shockingly, he was barely translated into English until 1963 and still lacks proper recognition today. Drawn to the master\u2019s psychologically probing tales of fin-de-si\u00e8cle<\/a> Rio de Janeiro<\/a>, a world populated with dissolute plutocrats, grasping parvenus<\/a>, and struggling spinsters, acclaimed translators Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson have now combined Machado\u2019s seven short-story collections into one volume, featuring seventy-six stories, a dozen appearing in English for the first time.<\/p>\n

Born in the outskirts of Rio, Machado displayed a precocious interest in books and languages and, despite his impoverished background, miraculously became a well-known intellectual figure in Brazil\u2019s capital by his early twenties. His daring narrative techniques and coolly ironic voice resemble those of Thomas Hardy<\/a> and Henry James<\/a>, but more than either of these writers, Machado engages in an open playfulness with his reader\u2014as when his narrator toys with readers\u2019 expectations of what makes a female heroine in \u201cMiss Dollar,\u201d or questions the sincerity of a slave\u2019s concern for his dying master in \u201cThe Tale of the Cabriolet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Predominantly set in the late nineteenth-century aspiring world of Rio de Janeiro\u2014a city in the midst of an intense transformation from colonial backwater to imperial metropolis\u2014the postcolonial realism of Machado\u2019s stories anticipates a dominant theme of twentieth-century literature. Readers witness the bourgeoisie of Rio both at play, and, occasionally, attempting to be serious, as depicted by the chief character of \u201cThe Alienist,\u201d who makes naively grandiose claims for his Brazilian hometown at the expense of the cultural capitals of Europe<\/a>. Signifiers of new wealth and social status abound through the landmarks that populate Machado\u2019s stories, enlivening a world in the throes of transformation: from the elegant gardens of Passeio P\u00fablico<\/a> and the vibrant Rua do Ouvidor<\/a>\u2014the long, narrow street of fashionable shops, theaters and caf\u00e9s, \u201cthe Via Dolorosa of long-suffering husbands\u201d\u2014to the port areas of Sa\u00fade<\/a> and Gamboa<\/a>, and the former Valongo<\/a> slave market.<\/p>\n

One of the greatest masters of the twentieth century, Machado reveals himself to be an obsessive collector of other people\u2019s lives, who writes: \u201cThere are no mysteries for an author who can scrutinize every nook and cranny of the human heart.\u201d Now, The Collected Stories of Machado de Assis<\/em> brings together, for the first time in English, all of the stories contained in the seven collections published in his lifetime, from 1870 to 1906. A landmark literary event, this majestic translation reintroduces a literary giant who must finally be integrated into the world literary canon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A landmark event, the complete stories of Machado de Assis finally appear in English for the first time in this extraordinary new translation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,11,83,21,8],"tags":[3781,8304,30020,12432,6727,30019,757],"class_list":["post-58514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthologies","category-books","category-brazil","category-latincarib","category-media-archive","tag-joaquim-maria-machado-de-assis","tag-machado-de-assis","tag-margaret-jull-costa","tag-michael-wood","tag-rio-de-janeiro","tag-robin-patterson","tag-w-w-norton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58514"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58518,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58514\/revisions\/58518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}