Epitaph of a Small Winner Paperback – 1 Sept. 2008

Arrived in perfect condition and in good time. Interesting read, quirky.

A master story teller, an essential ready for any lover of world literature.

Lovely read but what a dreadful title (invented by the translator for Posthumous Memoirs of Blas Cubas) - the whole point of the original title is to announce it is supposedly written from beyond the grave

Good book

Very good translation of a brazilian classic!

This is a masterpiece with the most beguiling voice, rejecting all sentimentality and yet loveable, modern and immediate like all great writing, something to reconcile you with how things are, like all great art.The short chapter, The Muleteer, is astonishing and deadly about our unavowed faults, but Machado de Assis can always pin down humanity in 2 pages.And I don't countenance any criticism of the translation which I'm re-reading with the same pleasure as years ago, in tandem with the Portuguese. Grossman's version is masterly, written in a literary English worthy of the original.

Genius

I bought this as it was highly recommended in Peter Robb's book A Death in Brazil (which is amazing btw). This one by Machado de Assis is quirky, but perhaps a bit dated. I can see how it might have seemed revolutionary at the time but not sure it really translated that well into 2016. More of historical literary interest I would say as perhaps the forerunner of similar confessional novels.