In these memoirs, Braz Cubas, a wealthy nineteenth-century Brazilian,
examines (from beyond the grave) his rather undistinguished life in 160
short chapters that are filled with philosophical digressions and
exuberant insights. A clear forerunner of Gabriel García Márquez and
Jorge Luis Borges, Epitaph for a Small Winner, first published in
1880, is one of the wittiest self-portraits in literary history as well
as one of the masterpieces of Brazilian literature (Salman Rushdie).