Review
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“The Collected Stories reveals the arc of Machado’s
career, from the straightforward love stories to the cerebral and
unpredictable later works.... Machado’s stories pulse with
life.... To Machado, your identity and the contours of your world
are formed not just by your circumstances but by what you think
about habitually. You are what you contemplate, so choose wisely.
These stories are a spectacular place to start.”
- Parul Sehgal, New York Times
“For the first time, the short stories of this 19th-century
Brazilian master have been collected and translated into English,
allowing the reader to trace the arc of Machado’s career, from
the straightforward early love stories to the postmodern later
works. Certain preoccupations persist: alluring widows, naive
young men, a fondness for coincidence. Above all looms the figure
of the bibliomane. 'This is my family,' one says, pointing to his
bookshelf. Like his characters, Machado was a creature of
literature; ink ran in his veins. It is breathtaking to see the
development of his style as well as his deep engagement with
storytelling all over the world.”
- New York Times, "Times Critics' Top Books of 2018"
“Perhaps the most hopeful book to appear in 2018 is The Collected
Stories of Machado de Assis…. an enormous, gorgeously designed
story omnibus from the eternal optimists at Liveright
Publishing.... Given a fresh translation by the accomplished duo
of Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson, these 76 stories move
among a bewildering range of traditions.... [A] watershed
collection.”
- Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
“A landmark volume that will be the first place that most
Americans encounter [De Assis]…. The Collected Stories, nearly a
thousand pages long, captures the greatest range of his writing
that has ever existed in a single English volume. Heroically
translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson, the book
gathers almost four decades of work, from 1870 to 1906. Machado
de Assis is light and fun in a way one seldom expects of authors
who end up as statues…. Machado is proof that cosmopolitanism
comes from reading, not from travel: through books, he knew the
whole world.”
- Benjamin Moser, The New Yorker
“A welcome omnibus edition of short fiction by the writer widely
considered the greatest to have come out of Brazil.... Sometimes
Machado de Assis reads like a European modernist (‘On that
day―sometime around 2222, I imagine―the paradox will take off its
wings and put on the thick coat of common truth’), at others like
the contemporary of Melville and Flaubert that he was (‘I
succumbed to the morbid pleasure of tormenting myself, for no
good reason’). In whatever regard, this collection offers plenty
of evidence for why he enjoys the reputation he does, a pioneer
of moods and modes that include fables, thin satires, and even
gothic romances. Essential to students of Latin American and
world literature.”
- Kirkus Reviews [Starred Review]
“A great ironist, a tragic comedian. . . . In his books, in their
most comic moments, he underlines the suffering by making us
laugh.”
- Philip Roth
“Another Kafka.”
- Allen Ginsberg
“The greatest writer ever produced in Latin America.”
- Susan Sontag
“The supreme black literary artist to date.”
- Harold Bloom
“A major literary event… One of the pleasures of reading Machado
is to encounter this comedy of detail, of human particulars…
There is a worldly hunger in Machado’s writing, an openness to
both life and art.... For Machado, literature begets more
literature. He delights in playing with form and narrative; in
this volume there are stories written as lectures, stories
written entirely in dialogue, and stories in which literary
theory itself is mocked.”
- Morten Hoi Jensen, Los Angeles Review of Books
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About the Author
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Machado De Assis, the grandson of ex-slaves, was born in Rio de
Janeiro and wrote Philosopher or Dog?, among other novels and
short-story collections.
MARGARET JULL COSTA is a three-time winner of the
Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. For New Directions, she has
translated works by Rafael Chirbes, Javier Marías, Fernando
Pessoa, Eça de Queirós, and Enrique Vila-Matas.
Robin Patterson has translated Luandino Vieira and lives in
England.
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