Widely acclaimed as "the greatest writer ever produced in Latin America"
(Susan Sontag), as well as "another Kafka" (Allen Ginsberg), Machado de
Assis (1839-1908) was famous in his time for his psychologically probing
tales of fin-de-siecle Rio de Janeiro--a world populated with
dissolute plutocrats, grasping parvenus, and struggling spinsters. In
this original paperback, Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson, "the
accomplished duo" (Wall Street Journal) behind the "landmark . . .
heroically translated" volume (The New Yorker) of the Collected
Stories of Machado de Assis, include twenty-six chronologically ordered
stories from the seven story collections published during Machado's
life--featuring all-time favorites such as the celebrated novella "The
Alienist"; the tragicomic "parable of bureaucracy, madness, and power"
(Los Angeles Review of Books), "Midnight Mass"; "The Cane"; and
"Father Against Mother." Ultimately, Machado de Assis: 26 Stories
affirms Machado's status as a literary giant who must finally be fully
integrated into the world literary canon.