The Looking-Glass

Essential Stories

By: Machado de Assis, Daniel Hahn (Translator)

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Paperback | 13 December 2022

At a Glance

Paperback
240 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
1.9 x 12.2 x 16.5

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Enchanting, fresh translations of the finest stories by Brazil's greatest writer and author of short stories, cited as the greatest black writer in Western literature

"Machado de Assis showed the human comedy is the same everywhere, and in conflicts between man and society, society usually wins." --The New Yorker

Machado de Assis is one of the most enigmatic and fascinating story writers who ever lived. What appear at first to be stately social satires reveal unanticipated depths through flashes of darkness and winking surrealism. This new selection of his finest work, translated by the prize-winning Daniel Hahn, showcases the many facets of his mercurial genius.

A brilliant scientist opens the first asylum in his home town, only to start finding signs of insanity all around him. A young lieutenant basks in praise, but in solitude feels his identity fray into nothing. The reading of a much-loved elder statesman''s journals reveals hidden thoughts of merciless cruelty.

This beautiful new collection of fresh translations offers the perfect gathering of his most beloved stories:

The Fortune-Teller

The Posthumous Portrait Gallery

The Loan

The Tale of the Cabriolet

The Stick

The Secret Cause

The Canon, or Metaphysics of Style

The Alienist

The Looking-Glass

Midnight Mass

Industry Reviews

'The greatest writer ever produced in Latin America' - Susan Sontag

'If Borges is the writer who made Garcia Marquez possible then it is no exaggeration to say that Machado De Assis is the writer who made Borges possible' - Salman Rushdie

'Another Kafka' - Allen Ginsberg

'A great writer who chose to use deadly humor where it would be least expected to convey his acute powers of observation and his penetrating insights into psychology. In superbly funny books he 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' - New York Times

'Machado de Assis was a literary force, transcending nationality and language, comparable certainly to Flaubert, Hardy or James' - New York Times Book Review

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